I go on sabbatical at the end of this week.
This is my second sabbatical, and this time mine overlaps with Andy's, so our family will be spending two months in Europe.
We'll start in Berlin, (where Andy will teach a class on Bonhoeffer, in the Bonhoeffer Haus, which is pretty awesome). Then we'll settle down in Paris for the duration, with short trips to London, Switzerland, Taize, Venice and Florence, and whatever day trips in France occur to us.
(When we come home, I'll have one more month left, which includes a week-long silent retreat at a monastery in Kentucky).
My goal this sabbatical is "uni-tasking," which is to say, I want to do one thing at a time. I want to live in the moment, to be in the here and now. I want to exist in the world with five changes of clothes and no social media. I want to struggle through learning a language, let my kids teach me things, and read novels set in the place I am visiting. I want to journal in a cafe and walk till my body hurts. I want to see art, and taste food, and be surprised by what a day might bring, and what I can get by without.
I want to learn from the French joie de vivre, which, I suspect, involves slowing down a lot and practicing patience and presence. And I am fascinated anyway by the idea of living with "exuberant enjoyment of life." I wrote about accepting the gift of this sabbatical, and the strange phenomenon of avoiding joy instead of embracing it. I have let go of guilt and self-judgment (which is an ongoing practice. Even in the writing of this I have had to do it again). That seems essential to receiving grace and joy. I've also let go of Facebook. Both of these experiences are preparing me for what's ahead.
I am scaling waaay back, leaving my computer at home (gulp), and going back to pen and paper. My work email is set to automatically delete everything that comes in. Next I have to figure out how not to get news updates on my phone every time our president says something shocking. But we're planning on turning off our phones for much of the time too.
I want to remember how to breathe. Deeply and fully.
And then I want to do it a lot.
I have purchased three different travel purses and road-tested them. This is unusual for me, considering I have used the same purse every day for at least seven years, and the same wallet since I was 18. I dug out some old purses to see if any of them might work. This is evidently not unusual for me. In one I found a ticket stub to the Table Mountain Cable Car in Capetown, and in another a subway card from NYC. After much indecision and extensive advice from Maisy, I think I finally arrived on the one I'll be taking. Now I am on the hunt for the perfect walking-all-over-creation shoes. These obsessions are helping me break down this big trip into manageable, bite-sized anxieties.
We've changed the burnt-out lightbulbs and washed the windows, and Saturday I'll scrub the fridge. All the things that need doing that I don't do for myself, I will do for someone else.
The dogsitter will have a lovely clean fridge and bright rooms.
I looked up my family tree, and it turns out that I have lots of roots in some of the places we'll be, so that's exciting. Maisy has some city scavenger hunt books, Owen is already planning family excursions to nearby towns, and Andy is reading French philosophers. The Roots are exploring.
Both kids are bringing ukuleles so we have some musical evenings ahead. Art supplies made the cut too, but the stuffed animal limit has been set at a strict four.
The kids are heartbroken about leaving the dog for two whole months, and we're working through those tears. There will be many more, I am sure. And I am not naive about how our strong-willed collection of introverts will handle jet lag, homesickness, competing agendas and limited alone time. But I am hoping to glean some joie even from that vivreing.
Or at least grow in patience and presence.
And breathing.
We are leaving in the thick of summer and returning to Fall. Owen leaves 13 and returns 14. My church will change while I am gone. But, as I have repeatedly assured the kids, the dog will not forget us.
Two months is a very short time in the scheme of things.
But each one of the next 60 days is a gift, ready to be received.
I am ready to receive them.
