Suburban Malaise

Wyoming Skyscape

Back to the Real World

We just came back from a short vacation in the Berkshires. We stayed in a beautiful 19th century house and enjoyed a life style more affluent than the one we usually lead. We went to Tanglewood and took our dance-crazed daughter to Jacob's Pillow. We drank organic coffee and bought home-made pies from charmingly rustic roadside stands and goat cheese from actual goat farms. That's heady stuff for suburban moles like us. Even when it rained, it was idyllic. Then it was back into the car and back home to New Jersey and the mounds of dirty laundry and unopened mail. Reality hurts.

Escape from Parenthood

I saw this melancholic face in the window of an antique store in the Berkshires, where we're vacationing with some friends. Both of us have sullen teenage offspring and the kids unite against us, leaving us all irritated and grumpy in this New England utopia. Yesterday the other mom and I left the kids with their dads for the day and spent the day at Clark Museum (which has a spectacular show of French painting). Afterwards, we stopped at every antique store we saw and browsed for hours, free of the usual adolescent sarcasm that's been accompaning us these days.

We came back to the house we rented refreshed and ready to resume our family responsibilities. Exhausting as the kids are, we missed them. Did they miss us? Not really.

Western Massachusetts

We're on a short vacation in the Berkshires, one of my favorite parts of New England. I'm here alone in the house we rented; our friends and my family all went to Tanglewood, but I'm feeling too anti-social for such a group activity right now. I'm home alone with the dog and lot of books. I can sit out back, look out over the Berkshire hills and enjoy some rural solitude.