Vacation

In the dream vision we are writing furiously in our nook amid the pines while child-starved family members eagerly Zoogle-sit for hours at a time. The vision also includes incense bearing trees, demon-lovers, Abyssinian maids, and all kinds of hanky panky on the banks of the river Alph, of course: a richly textured opium dream as beautiful as it is doomed.

I do not believe (more exactly: I chose not to believe) that summer vacation with a toddler is an intrinsically fantastical concept. Were I a banker and my wife a socialite, with the joint objective of catching up on light reading in the spas of Baden Baden, I believe that relaxation, at least to some degree, would be within our reach: we would simply hire a nanny named Gerta Schliessenmaul, hand over the zumopfergehoerendeerbse and be done with it. At 9 we would hand off the Zoogle, at 10 my wife would take the Mud Treatment, I would smoke my pipe all day, and early every evening there would be a knock at our bungalow, the matronenhefte Gerte with a beaming Zoogle in her arms, a wriggling, happy child glowing in the dual delights of reunion with mama and liberation from Biederfrau.

But we are academics, not bankers. The defining characteristic of our job is its lack of leisure time. Academia (at least pre-degree or pre-tenure academia) represents a kind of indentured contract with Posterity, wherein any time not spent teaching or sleeping or eating Chinese takeout is time that really ought to be spent developing one's Gesammelte Werke. The academic is always looking over his shoulder, always wondering who will be asking about his latest Productions, always anxious about his grant applications, always cultivating his great, writhing hoard of good ideas.

In effect, then, vacation is just a code word for 'doing everything you usually do, with the added challenge of more social expectations.' Zoogle still gets up at 6 every morning. Redeye shift, anyone? Nary a taker, and no wonder: just about every evening is filled with low-key, desultory conversation that drags late into the night, the sort of loose, fragmentary talk that gets mixed with drinks and mild boasting and family stories, slowly building the slender structure we call Clan. And Clan can be a beautiful thing, but it pays no heed to child bio-rhythms, and doesn't recognize the relentless metronome of the Tower, and runs rough-shod over anything shy of a Deed.

Being on vacation at the Dome is a wonderful thing. The air is clear and calm, and in the late afternoon native birds loose their long, lazy lovesongs in the wood below the lawn. The clean, forgiving scent of pine acts as an absolution from the soot and exhaust of the Big City, seems to purge my body of Pittsburgh's diesel fumes and restore the animal edge to my bludgeoned senses. From the back deck, one can watch the sun set over the valley, the smouldering orange glow of the desert a mortar of light holding the living green of the pines into a firm but fading natural mosaic. This area is a place of spectacular natural beauty, and not a day passes in which I don't consider myself exceptionally lucky to be here. But it one thing to be lucky, quite another to be rested: I anticipate heavy eyebags when we return to the grind in August.