Note to Self: Get Away More Often

I am renewed.

This past Friday Matthew and I went for our first overnight without the boys in...more than a year? I'm not sure exactly how long it as been, but a long, long time. We booked a room at the St. Francisville Inn, dropped the boys off at his parents' in Mandeville, and then made the easy hour and 45 minute drive to St. Francisville. Our vacation started the moment we left the driveway. Matthew downloaded some Radioloab for the ride and we listened WITHOUT INTERRUPTIONS for the whole ride. The silence was almost as amazing as the stories.

The Inn was perfect, tucked under gracious oaks right in the heart of the historic district. Our rooms wasn't quite ready but there was a mesmerizing smell of bacon and fried chicken in the air and our host pointed us toward The Eight Sisters, right next door. Soul food, yum. After lunch we hopped on our bikes and tooled around the town, stopping at shops and getting lost and discovering little back roads and gardens. We ended up at the Grace Episcopal Church, where Matthew's mom had told us some of his relatives were buried. We first walked into the church, led by a friendly man who gave us some guides and then went quietly to a pew to pray. It was Good Friday afternoon, and the beautiful church was empty except for us and the praying man. The afternoon sun glinted in the stained glass windows and the dust settled on the worn pews. It made me miss the solitude and reflection I used to enjoy when I went to church.

Then we strolled in the cemetery. We quickly realized the grounds were too extensive for us to search for his relatives, so we each just picked a couple of plots to peruse. Matthew somehow walked right to his family plot. It was bizarre, because you couldn't make out the names on the headstones unless you stood right over them, and some you still had to trace the names with your fingers to decipher. And yet, there he was, drawn to his ancestors in this antebellum cemetery under the giant oaks.

We made a last stop at an art gallery and were surpised to that see one of our old neighbors from Baton Rouge was a featured artist, her lovely watercolors adorning one whole wall. We chatted with the gallery owner about the town and the art, including his own, and one canvas caught my eye. It was of the owner sitting on the porch of one of the cafes in town, the place we were planning to go for dinner since we'd been told they had good food and live music on Friday nights. The owner called it "Joe's Break" because he liked to close up the gallery on Friday afternoons and head over there for a beer during happy hour, which started at 3:00. We decided to gamble that we'd end up having a lovely time at the cafe and bought the painting. It's now hanging next to my bed and I love it not only because it is well rendered and calls back our little getaway, but also because it reminds me that not everyone runs the rat race. Some people , like Joe, open art galleries in small towns and close them up at 3 pm to have a drink on a front porch.

After our art splurge, we went back to the Inn and I took a (cool) dip in the courtyard pool. In the parking lot we had spotted a car with tons of NOLA stickers and struck up a conversation with the family in the courtyard over afternoon cocktails. While we didn't know them, we weren't surpised to realize in the span of a few minutes that we knew people in common. While Matthew was getting the drinks at the Inn's public bar, he ran into my former stepfather, who now lives in St. Francisville. Even a few hours from New Orleans, south Louisiana remains a small world. Note to self: go to Shreveport to engage in illicit activity.

After the pool and the socializing, we headed out to dinner at the cafe around the corner. We sat on the large screened back porch and ate fried crab claws and drank margaritas and listened to the band, an acoustic duo from Baton Rouge. We remarked to each other what a strange and pleasant feeling it was to be away from home and yet feel so at home. I can't quite relax when I'm out in New Orleans or even Baton Rouge, because we will invariably run into someone we know. Not that that is always a bad thing -- in fact, most of the time I love that -- but sometimes you just want to be on your own. Yet that usually means being in a city with different flavors and landscapes and accents. But in St. Francisville, we felt completely native, yet refreshingly anonymous.

After dinner Matthew wanted some ice cream so we got in the car and went up the highway to the gas station. Walking in I ran smack into a girl I haven't seen since I worked at my other firm, almost six years ago. We'd gotten to know each other very well over those years we worked together but I hadn't seen her since. She's not from St. Francisville, either, but it is just such a teensy-tinsy little world, and I guess the Easter weekend brought people out of the woodwork. It was nice to see her and we promised to get back in touch on fb.

That night we read in bed...from 8:30 until 11. Such a treat.

In the morning we had a delicious breakfast (note to self: bananas foster over waffles...delish) and then got back on our bikes to make a loop around the town and see some of the more pastoral views. We passed over Bayou Sara, beside cow fields, and through deep woods and then out into acres of land being cultivated by a nursery owner. It was like the Louisiana version of a Tuscan landscape, hilly and charmingly agricultural, dotted with azaleas and orange trees and crepe myrtles.

Our getaway ended with more Radiolab in the car, and then we were reunited with the boys and had a lazy lunch on the porch in Mandeville. Afterward, we all decided to cool off in the lake. Henry loved it, it's just like the ocean except not salty and no jellyfish, but Dean said it was too cold. And it was, but also just delightful to stand in the whipping waves with friends and family and look out over the lake, sparking with late afternoon sun.

Easter Sunday was also easy-breezy. After the boys woke us up at 7:15 and discovered what the bunny brought, we took them to see Rio. It was Dean's first movie theater experience and he loved it. Note to self: Easter Sunday morning is a perfect time to take kids to a movie because all the good upstanding citizens of the world are at church and so you don't have to worry about your two-year old bothering them in the movies. After the movie, we had a scrumptious ham dinner at Mom's, and then came home and the boys dyed Easter eggs in the back yard. Ah, life. You are too good to me right now.