When I arrived at my hotel for a speaking gig in Florida, I was in heaven. It had a balcony overlooking the pool and a huge bed with creamy-white sheets and gigantic pillows. When I walked from one room to the other, I heard nothing. The carpet absorbed all the sound.
And then there was the television. Actually, there were two of them, with two remotes, and each television had about 600 channels, give or take a few.
I was having a moment—with a hotel room My hotel room was all, "Heeeeyyy you. Come sit down and drink coffee with me. This will be the hot kind that you never have to reheat because Henry interrupted you mid-sip to look for a Lego that’s the size of an aspirin, and so then you left your mug in the microwave. You always find it there, all cold and alone, the next morning. It’s your thing." Ah, hotel room. You knew me so well. And then hotel room said, "Also, you can watch romantic comedies. There’s about seven of them on right now, all at the same time. At least two have Ryan Gosling in them. And not once will anyone change the channel to sports or anything with a Jar Jar in it."
Six hours later, I was lying amongst crumpled Blow Pop wrappers and had watched fourteen episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. I couldn’t seem to turn away from the host of this show. His bleached hair was hypnotic. And the last episode involved a meatball sub that was about as delicious as this hotel room. When I rolled over to exit the bed, a sticky Blow Pop wrapper attached itself to my backside. Hotel Room and I were now in the part of the relationship where we started to pass gas and walk around with our guts hanging out.
I wandered into the bathroom to take a shower that lasted longer than all my showers in a week back home. I also cranked the air conditioning to the point where I could nearly see my breath. Hotel Room knew this was just a way to get back at the fact that I slept with a man who was his own thermonuclear device at night.
By the next morning, Hotel Room and I were kind of on the outs. I stayed awake until nearly 1:00 a.m. because Property Brothers just kept going, sucking poor, hapless people in with the granite countertops and stainless steel everything before telling them they couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t stop watching. In fact, the television played on throughout the night, something I had been taught was one of the seven deadly sins—right next to standing in front of an open fridge—and when I woke up, I felt rumpled. My teeth were fuzzy from the Blow Pop residue. I had a headache from the buzzy television and nearly freezing overnight. In other words, I had a hangover from my hotel room.
My relapse was long gone. I was writing and speaking about recovery. I was such a sober rock star. And right now, I was kind of a mess. In a sticky kind of way.
And that was all right. It was just fine, in fact.
Balance is for gymnasts. It’s not for me. Gymnasts are tiny and chirpy, and they can fly. I don’t need that kind of activity level in my life. Balance tells me to take all the weight of my life—my to-do lists, the endless laundry, and all those requests from people needing me to find
things—and spread them out so they’re evenly distributed. This is just a bit depressing. Also, it’s nearly impossible, so then balance basically sticks its fingers in its ears and waggles them at me. Balance is like that. It’s so immature. Balance is for some sort of scary margarine spread that has more chemicals in it than Chernobyl. Spread it on your toast, and it glows.
Balance is dangerous. I have a friend, Tricia, who teaches yoga classes in our town. Tricia is a kindred spirit because she has a searing sense of humor. She also can do all those sinewy, impossible yoga moves with the cool names such as Standing Without Falling Over Crane and Look, I’m Still Not Falling Over Lotus Tiger. I don’t hate her for it; she can’t help it that she is making my theory about balance topple over a little. Tricia wouldn’t topple. She’s too light on her feet for that. And balance-y.
The thing is, when I have watched even the best yogis, I look for the wobble. I look for the slight catch in their steps. The adjustments. The half steps. None of it is perfect. It can’t be, or we couldn’t reach for something further out, beyond us.
And yet, I am a bit jealous of Tricia and her nearly perfect headstand. I’ve seen her do it. It is graceful and only a little wobbly. It is beautiful. It’s why I love the ballet or looking up when snow is falling. It’s a deep breath. It’s Chopin. When a singer holds a note, or a swan princess leaps, it cracks us open a little. The note stops. The dancer lands. The ground always comes up to meet us. And that is how balance is impossible. Suspension is exhaustion. At some point, we must put down the weight and anticipate another time when that chord will sound. The waiting is what makes this world bearable, the knowing it might come again.
I say we trade in our perfect balancing acts for a scheduled running away. It’s where we drop all the bags we packed and take leave of our senses and run outside at night, perhaps to look up at the snow falling. It makes no sense, and that is all right. We have taken leave of our senses.
Granted, my hotel room wasn’t total nirvana. It was just a lovely, lonely place where I had no dirty socks on the floor, no dinners to make, and a huge bed all to myself. We moms need to get away. We all need to be alone at times, away from family and obligations and endless expectations. When that perfection alarm starts clanging at me, paired with a loud reverberation of mom guilt and exhaustion, that’s when I need to head for the hills. It’s good for my parenting and for my marriage. We can’t always book a trip to Florida, but a half day at a coffee shop might suffice. But I still believe a hotel room for a mom once every six months or so is a great life insurance policy, not just for the mom, but for her children and husband. Pets too.
And so, I woke up with the hotel hangover. As I rolled my suitcase down to the lobby, I made sure I didn’t have Blow Pop wrappers stuck to my shoes. There was no balance here. I stayed up too late and ate too much sugar. And as I walked, I found my steps quickening because I was going home. I missed my husband and boys. The unhinging from reality set me back down, gently, to macaroni and cheese, socks on the floor, arguing about ridiculous things, and pushing back the hair from fevered foreheads.
Adapted from How to Be Perfect Like Me by Dana Bowman with permission of Central Recovery Press. Copyright © 2018 by Dana Bowman.
Bowman is a long-time English teacher and part-time professor in the department of English at Bethany College, Kansas. Her first book, Bottled: A Mom’s Guide to Early Recovery, published by Central Recovery Press, was chosen as a 2016 Kansas Notable Book. She is also the creator of the popular momsieblog.com and leads workshops on writing and addiction, with a special emphasis on being a woman in recovery while parenting young children.
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