This came up at a hangout with friends last week: “Where are you going on vacation this summer?” And for the first summer in at least a decade, my answer is “nowhere.”
Last year, I was away from home on a third of the year’s weekends, plus four full weeks. In May I traveled out of state three weekends in a row. One my first weekends home, I stayed put. I want to get reacquainted with my own home.
I swept and did other maintenance on my balcony and put the patio umbrella up. The rule for meals was “Use what you have on hand.” It yielded a lunchtime feast of a great salad and corn on the cob, and a delicious dinner soup of leftover rotisserie chicken, a bunch of sautéed vegetables from the fridge, a couple of cans of white beans and some secret seasoning. When the half-used bottle of salsa in the fridge turned out to be expired, lo and behold, that fridge also held most of the ingredients for fresh salsa. And it tasted better.
I’m saving vacation days for some events in late fall. But what is summer without the carefree feeling of going and seeing? This year, the summer weeks will sometimes end in the smallest kind of staycation: a daycation.
In downtown Little Rock, several things are on my list: the Arkansas Arts Center (the annual Delta show is coming); the Historic Arkansas Museum, where the exhibits are small but always interesting; the Saturday morning Farmers Market; browsing time at the coffee shop on the top floor of the Central Arkansas Library System’s Main Library; and the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Clinton Presidential Center. While there, I’ll also stroll down by the river to see that actual rock the city is supposedly named for. After too much walking, there’s the treat of riding the trolley over to North Little Rock and back. Across I-630, there’s the Esse Purse Museum; a place with an authentic old soda fountain; and the Roots Café, also a favorite place to eat.
In Riverdale, there’s the newly reopened Riverdale 10 cinema, and on an especially hot day, it’s appealing to plan a DIY film festival, two or three on one day. If screen fatigue sets in, there are sometimes weekend flea markets and estate sales in warehouses nearby, some favorite restaurants (Red Door, Whole Hog barbecue, Faded Rose), and a sunset stroll at the Big Dam Bridge.
But some daycations will be right here at home, opening the balcony door to the breeze, discovering forgotten treasures in the fridge and pantry, making things from scratch, editing some closets, letting some hours slip by with books I already own, cooling off in the neighborhood pool, inviting friends over to share it with. Because isn’t that the point? I love the places I go and people I see there. But I want to relearn to love what I have here.
Where am I going on vacation this summer? Home. This home.
An Arkansan for 23 years, Laura Lynn Brown sets small things right as a copy editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Her writing has been published in The Iowa Review, Slate, the Art House America blog, Tweetspeak Poetry and elsewhere. She blogs at lauralynnbrown.com, tweets at @lauralynn_brown and posts a random assortment at the tumblr site Daylilies.
