Darling,

Remember that time I spontaneously booked us a weekend at whatever chalet was affordable in Manitoba? And remember looking at the pictures and finding that it felt clean and springing for the expense that was just under what the kids’ piano lessons cost in a month?

I don’t know if you felt this way too, but the week before leaving my thoughts would go to this booking I’d made and wonder why I did it… Wasn’t it just changing scenery to do the same things as at home, with the additional job of packing and unpacking?

But then, remember? We arrived on a rainy Friday afternoon and just being somewhere else seemed to trick the brain into feeling a sort of freedom. Being somewhere else was leaving behind all the things around you that remind you what to do next. The quiet and the farms around and the distant lowing cows... The list of things to do shrinks down to food and entertainment. Exploration is the new form of passing time: the country lanes, the nearby town, the pebbled beach.

Remember how the dog kept us awake the first night? The little beagle made us feel like new parents again. The kind that, smiling with tired eyes, made us catch the other’s gaze and say, “we’re in this together, eh?”

The weekend, short as it was, time distended as it was, was one of those that cemented this growing feeling I get when we’re all together and we move about like a unit, like a little cell with its mitochondria and nucleus and all those other little pieces I once memorized in grade 11 biology class.

Just thought I’d write to say thanks. And, love.