Think you need to get away? In our case, a mother-in-law in dwindling health, jobs of various importance and a sense of responsibility too puffed up for our own good had resulted in this: For six years my wife and I had not taken a vacation. And this in beehive-busy Japan.
Yes, at times various work assignments had pulled me from Tokyo. On occasion, too, I was able to dip my toes in my hometown, once on a deathbed visit to my father -- a deathbed from which he got up and walked away.
But my wife, nursing her own mother on that very same bed, had hardly escaped even once in all those years. Each summer we formed plans, and each summer something always arose to shatter those plans to bits.