Eleven months a year, I’m a staunch city girl...But come July, and I am transformed into a country girl

Eleven months a year, I’m a staunch city girl.

I love the noise and the energy, even the blaring horns and ever-present construction dust. (Okay, maybe not the dust.) But come July, and I am transformed into a country girl. Or, these days, into a wannabe country girl.

As a child, summer days unrolled in lush, green expanses of freedom: seen-better-days-bungalows, chasing butterflies, and joining my visiting Zeidy for a hike through the woods, picking blueberries. But by the time I was six, the real adventures began. My mother’s inborn wings began to spread and flutter. Summer found us in Monsey, Monroe, Lakewood, Bnei Brak and the Dead Sea, Miami Beach. Much as I was a proud city girl, summer was the time to make my escape.

But then came the year I found myself stuck in the city. It was my first year out of school and I was holding down a full-time office job. Bah. The previous year, I had spent July doing sports and dances in camp, and August, traveling throughout Eastern Europe. Now, it was Boro Park and boredom: the only trek was to my office. My wings beat silently.

I soon defected from my job and joined my mother in Miami Beach. I had been planning to leave my job anyway, so why not do it then and escape the sticky Brooklyn misery?

It was a wondrous summer, but the next year I worked a job I had no intention of leaving. More importantly, I was newly married and we needed the income. That was my first real taste of sweating through a stifling city summer.

The following year, I was a new mother and so I muddled through the city heat in a cocoon of sleepless nights, cotton diapers, and the magic of new motherhood. It was bearable. And now, summer comes again. My son is delicious, and what’s more, he no longer crumples my entire day into his demanding, little fists. And so, I itch for a vacation.

But said vacation is nowhere in sight. My husband and I decided that if we go anywhere, we’ll wait until the bitter midwinter months and our escape to sunny skies and gently swaying trees. For now, we’ll stay put. My wings flap meaningfully at this rather tragic situation.

Wednesday evening, I text my sister about how I really, really want to go on vacation, and we’re not going anywhere, and Mindy is going to Switzerland and who says I can’t be jealous?

Thursday morning, I pray. Hashem, I really, really want to go on a vacation. Maybe someone can offer to sponsor it?

No, I think. I don’t have to give Hashem ideas. If He sees fit to make it happen, He has plenty of means at his disposal. I forget about my little plea and continue my Erev Shabbos routine; setting the table, polishing the silver, preparing fish, tomato dip, eggs.

It is late afternoon when my husband calls me that he has just received a text from a random acquaintance: How about a free Shabbos with your family in an upscale hotel in the Catskills? He explains how he is putting together a choir to lead the davening and the Shabbos meals at this hotel; it’s a last-minute thing and he needs a few extra guys. He knows my husband sings. Would he like to join?

Before I can fully process what is happening, we are packing up a suitcase, and driving up into the beautiful, rolling hills of upstate New York.

And all the while, there’s a little shiver of… of love? Peace? running through me; the kind that bubbles up from somewhere deep, deep inside and swells and flows and tingles down to your toes. The kind that makes your head tilt up to the heavens and your heart fill with gratitude and your wings flap in freedom.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 454)