creative defining of "vacation"

I left the house on this first "real" day of my vacation, unshowered, barely dressed, to drop Tim at a doctor's appointment. I stopped in at the office around 9:30 to pick up 2 pieces of paper and to record a new temporary greeting on my phone. Should have taken 5 minutes MAX.   At noon, I finally made it back out the door.  My creative gesture for the day: three varieties of tickets for the three "A Summer Sunday and all that JAZZ" events on June 27 (a gospel brunch and two vocal concerts... see St. Albert the Great's FB fan page for more info), along with several posters to promote the events and direct people on the 27th.   Yeah, I know I said I wouldn't use work-related things for my Creating Something Daily, but after my morning at the office I then went to Costco (still unshowered, no bra -- who IS this woman? What have you done with Erin??) and succumbed to the purchase of the book "My Name is Memory" which was recently recommended to me by my longtime friend -- and previously incarnated sister -- Cathy.  And frankly, I'd prefer to read it tonight than go upstairs and force myself to make a card.  So there!

Not only were Cathy and I sisters at an Irish coaching inn a few centuries back, but it was in her company that I experienced the most genuine example of the kind of memory that Anne Brashares describes in this novel.  Cathy was divorced from the father of her young daughter and son, and had married a man quite a bit older -- similar to the 16 year age gap between my own parents.  I was visiting their duplex one evening when her son -- aged 3 or 4 -- crawled into her lap and sleepily recounted the story of his life in a native American tribe in a past century, where Cathy's new husband had been a major figure, and there had been a terrible fire.  The boy was too young to have picked up this storyline, and it was as detailed as a true memory.  I'm sure that a couple of years later, he had no memory of it at all.

Now here's a barely related but useful fact:  that little groove between your nose and your upper lip is called your philtrum.  But my mom used to tell me (when I was little and God was male)  that it was formed by God laying his finger there just before sending us off to be born, when we were still all moist and malleable like clay, and saying "Don't tell anyone" -- and that's why we don't remember for very long after we're born.  By the time we  learn to communicate, the images of where we were before birth have mostly faded away.  Except for the people from the Thin Places, like Cathy (who learned to crochet from her grandma in a dream) and others who make the effort to jog the memory.

Where have YOU been?  Were we there together?

I'm off to read now.