SCOTLAND

A R T H U R ‘ S S E A T , S C O T L A N D

When I was a little girl I used to tell all of my babysitters that I lived in a castle. That the house we were in wasn’t my real house. That actually I was a princess who lived high in a tower on top of a mountain overlooking the ocean. I so vividly remember what it looked like in my mind, my imaginary home. And now I’m pretty certain I’ve seen it in real life.

I don’t know if I’ll ever forget staring out the window as we left London for Edinburgh by train. The blur of dull yellows and browns slowly deepening and brightening into deep and fluorescent greens as we sped by. Flat fields lifting and waking and rolling into soft hills sprinkled with sheep. A clear sky above eventually giving way to dreary clouds that stretched along jagged cliffs and out over an angry looking North Sea, with its white capped waves crashing into shore. And a deep mist that slowly appeared creeping above everything and between everything and which seemed to envelop the landscape in some sort of enchantment.

Scotland is every bit as magical as you would imagine a country that picked the unicorn as its national animal would be. Mountains made from sleeping dragons and mystical islands protected by Viking Princesses. The home of King Arthur and and his knights, the Loch Ness Monster and Merlin the Magician. Walking the streets of Edinburgh feels like walking through the pages of a story book. Huge towers and giant castles literally every where you look. Flying buttresses and pointed arches and ancient stones covered in moss. Tiny pubs tucked into crooked alleyways. Streets that weave into and out of and straight up and down. It’s Hogwarts in real life. And you half expect a wizard to walk out of a potion shop at every turn.

But the last couple of weeks, as magical as they were, were also really hard. I was still really sick, battling the fourth week of a wicked virus and a cough that I just couldn’t kick. The kind of cough that sneak attacks you on bus and just won’t let up until you’ve completely peed your pants (thank you motherhood), pushed the call button in a panic, fled out onto the street hacking and gagging and into the nearest market with tears pouring out if your eyeballs desperately searching for some water to make it stop. And with the cough came pretty intense chest pain and a slew of heart-type symptoms that I’ve never felt before. And man is it unnerving to have intense chest pain you’ve never felt before when you’re far from home.

I’m happy to report that one urgent care + two ER visits, a couple EKGs, some bloodwork and a “wee catscan” later it was determined that I must have sprained a rib head from all of the coughing and that the virus could have flared up my autoimmune disorder causing the other symptoms. And finding that all out definitely felt like some sort of relief. But as any parent knows, being sick with small children isn’t the lay-down-in-bed-all-day fest that it used to be. The idea of resting is laughable. And let me tell you about trying to carry your refusing-to-walk-two-year-old with a badly sprained rib head.

Keeping two boys inside a 300 square foot airbnb all day was impossible so we tried our best to get out and managed to still do lot of exploring. We drank hot cocoas and read Harry Potter cozied up on cafe couches all over the city. We visited the castles and the museums. We played at every park we could find. But I also did a lot of downing lozenges and guzzling hot teas and laying sprawled out on the mats of a the local soft play places with feverish chills while the kids ran circles around the joint. And poor Brad. Waking up at 7 to take the boys so I could sleep when he himself hadn’t gone to bed until 2. It’s all made for some rather exhausted parents and some questioning of whether it was time to call this thing quits and head home.

But just when you think you might seriously be ready to throw in the towel you go and have a day like we did in St. Andrew’s. Where you’re feeling a little better and the weather is perfect and the train ride is gorgeous. Where Brad, by some stroke of unimaginable luck is able to walk on to play a round on the infamous golf course and you take the the kids to romp around the beach and watch them dance through ancient cathedral ruins. And they’re sweet and play well together and miraculously listen to you all day. And you have some kind of wonderful type meal that melts in your mouth in a wicked cool old pub with stone ceilings and stiff drinks made by a red headed bartender in a bow tie. And you sit on the train ride home, just marinating in the high of it all, realizing that these types of days are the reason you want to keep going.

I had someone ask me recently if this trip was as dreamy as it looked on instagram. And the answer is absolutely effin not. Because Instagram stories or posts are moments. Glimmers. The best seconds of people’s day. I think maybe that’s why I like them so much. Because when I see them all back to back I am reminded of how fucking beautiful my life is. And those glimmers are certainly real but they’re not the whole story. The whole story is more chaotic and messy and frustrating and insane. The whole story includes me, peeling myself out of bed sick and miserable after being shook awake by my 5 year old so that I can bow to the demand for “yogurt, oh wait no eggs, oh wait no now that you made them I’m not hungry.” And me swallowing hot embers of rage 45 times a day while I try not to loose my shit on my absolutely wild children. And me coughing up cupfuls of snot while pushing them uphill over slick cobblestone streets while being pelted by rain. And me lying in bed awake at night wondering what the fuck is going on with my heart and my chest and “am I making it up or are my limbs feeling a bit numb?” And Brad and I snapping at each other because we’re lost and about to miss our train and the kids are screaming and we’re both at the end of our rope. The whole story includes exhaustion and worry and longing for the familiar. Mixed right in with all of those beautiful bits. And I guess that’s why I like having the blog as well. Because it gives me a chance to paint the entire picture. Because I think the shitty parts are as equally important to the story as the amazing ones.

There was definitely more than a couple moments over the past few weeks that I really wondered if we could keep doing this. Where it felt like it was just too much and maybe we should head home. But as I sit on a train to France, finally breathing through my nose and feeling like an ordinary human again, I know I’m not ready. I want to continue to collect more of those glimmers that make life feel so beautiful. Because lord knows, that little girl who thought she lived in a castle is still a sucker for the fairy tale bits thirty years later.

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