I was in bed by 7:45 because I was dead tired and the Airbnb had no living room, just a bedroom and a kitchen and a bathroom, a drawback I was too weary to care about.
No cozy comforter, just what appeared to be a moving blanket, only thinner, and its identical twin tucked away on a shelf in the closet. Sam and I shut the door and drew the blackout curtains tight against the normal person bustle on the street outside.
I slept deeply, without interruption, for the next ten hours.
My sleep has been fitful since November 5th, but here in a very basic Airbnb in Carrboro, North Carolina, I slept like a roofied baby.
Was it the hour of playing crazy llama with my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson, a game he made up that was basically tossing a small stuffed llama around and retrieving it? Was it the simple farm-to-table dinner with our radiant daughters and their equally radiant partners and the aforementioned two-and-a-half-year-old, who had ditched the llama to eat the chicken off my chicken sandwich? Was it not watching serial killer T.V. before bed?
Whatever the reason, I woke restored in a dim room, warmed by a space heater, minus the existential dread that’s been dogging me, and thought, now this is what I call a vacation.