We knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away forever. The blog will be back. It will be relaunched mid-September with a new look and a new name: Swimming to Shore. Become a registered user if you’d like me to email you when it kicks off.

I was interviewed by New Hampshire Public Radio (or, as I like to call it, NPR with an “H”) about the Washington Post story. Click here to hear it. My interview is in the first part of the broadcast.

My article is the cover story of this Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine:

Beasts of Burden: What happens to thoroughbred racehorses after their retirement

The title of this post doesn’t really make sense, but I’m keeping it because it makes me laugh.

Ok, gentle readers, it’s time for me to take a hiatus from the blog. I’m not sure how long it’s going to be. Right now I’m planning to take the whole summer off–but I might be back before then. Or, I might decide at the end of the summer that I’m done for good. We’ll see. I’ve got a few other projects I want to give more attention to, and, despite all the good stuff this blog does for me (in case you missed it, see this post), the fact is it requires a good chunk of time each week that I think will be better spent on other things…at least for a while.

But a few things before I go:

1. This Sunday, May 30, an article I wrote about what happens to retired thoroughbred racehorses will be the cover story of The Washington Post’s Sunday Magazine. I’ll be sure to post the link directly to the article when it’s online, but if you’re local, buy a copy…to help ensure there will still be newspapers in print to hire writers like myself!

2. Thanks for reading. Really. Seriously. It means a lot to me. If you want to be notified when I start up again, become a registered user and I’ll send you an email when that happens.

3. Enjoy your respective summers.

4. Keep it real.

Peace out.

[We took the kids canoeing yesterday, which brought to mind a canoe trip down the Rio Grande that my father and uncle took my brother, sister, and me on when I was seven years old—the same age as my son now. I kept trying to write about that trip as a story, but it kept coming out as a poem of sorts. So here it is.]

It is not the lapping water at the edges of the boat that brings to mind the memory of age seven and sunburned—paddling down the Rio Grande, a snake finding its way onto our boat, the Indian boys swimming out to meet us, their brown skin that looked so much thicker than my own. The sun bounced off them. It saturated me.

And it isn’t the tug of the earth under the boat as it’s pulled ashore—my children scrambling from it as I did then.

It is the oar in the water, that act of cutting without blood, that returns the memory in full color. You were younger than I am now. No shirt and no plan beyond making it down the river with your brother and three young children. I never doubted you.

And when it was all over, hours later than planned, no drinking water, skin seared in retribution, a worried wife and mother waiting at home, we all had a story to tell, didn’t we?

We’ve told it so many times since I sometimes doubt it ever really happened. That snake. Those Indian boys reversing evolution before our eyes: human to amphibian as they slid from the shore to the water. You said later that you worried they were angry. That we were trespassing. That they would capsize the boat. You held the oar ready to fight. But they just asked us where we were going, as those who are stationary always ask those who move. I still remember one boy—the oldest one—brushing aside his long, dark hair that hung like curtains across his face.

And I realize now the light that bounced off their skin is the same light that reflected off the water yesterday. It is the same sun—its rays spanning a generation. But we saw no snakes and no Indian boys. My children’s adventures are a thin page next to my own. I try to give them the world unfettered by rules, but I can’t. I strap them in life jackets and apply sunscreen and tell them not to rock the boat. But you…you parented as if your very will for our survival would be enough. And somehow, it was. Somehow, the oars cut into the water and pulled us forward in spite of it all.

I’ve often wanted a glimpse of what my life would be like if I hadn’t made the choices I have. I know I’m not alone in this. It’s the great human dilemma: that every time we say yes to one thing it means we say no to something else. And so we comfort ourselves with phrases like “everything works out for the best” and “I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for those mistakes I made yesterday”—but I think it’s just what we say to protect ourselves from the much scarier truth: We don’t know. Who’s to say if we hadn’t gone to a different school or married someone else or not married at all or had more kids or had no kids or devoted our life to music or God or the stock market that we wouldn’t be happier than we are today?

Of course, it’s futile thinking. The fact is, my choices have made me who I am, and it’s better to learn how to live and love that reality than wonder “what if” about the million and one things I did or didn’t do. And I do that quite well, actually. “Happy” is an arbitrary word—one that I’m more comfortable attributing to a moment than an hour, much less a life—but still, if someone were to ask me, “Are you happy?” I would answer, “Yes,” and mean it.

But because I’m me that means I have to navel gaze and create these stories in my head about what my life would be like if I’d chosen a different path. I call it Sliding Doors Syndrome and hope you will, too, because I really think “coined an internationally recognized phrase” would be a cool thing to add to my resume.

Lucky for me, I have a couple people in my life who fulfill the “what if” role for me. One is my best friend, Natasha, who is single, childless, and a lobbyist. When she and I were in our early 20s, we moved to DC together. My career sights were set on being a lobbyist. Hers were less clear but she had no interest in lobbying and thought I was weird to want to do that. Back then, she was also more inclined to marriage and kids than I, who had just ended a two-year relationship that had lasted 23 months too long and had thus fully committed myself to singlehood for the next decade (three days after landing in DC, I met Dave).

If you had asked me then who, in 18 years, would be a writer, married and the mother of two, I would have guessed Natasha, and so would she. Yet our lives flip-flopped somewhere along the way. (We once went to a psychic in Sedona, Arizona, who told us that Natasha and I have been friends for hundreds of years and were even married at one point—she was the man, which brings me no end of joy to remind her.) She is living the life I had expected I would have; and I am living hers. Whenever we’ve doubted our decisions, we’ve often said how great it would be to swap lives for a couple months. But we can’t, so instead we listen to one another’s joys and disappointments and, depending on the day, are thankful for being where we are or filled with longing for the other’s   [fill in the blank] .

But in some ways, Natasha’s life is too far removed from mine to really give me an idea of what my life would be. We’re different in many ways and the things I love (animals, the outdoors, country life) hold little interest for her. Plus, I always thought I would be married. Kids might have been a question mark in my life, but marriage never was. So often when I look at Natasha’s life, I can’t really see mine, simply minus a husband and kids.

So I have Lori Dagley. Lori and I were best friends in Mrs. Tomlin’s third grade class. But the cruel lottery of class assignment separated us after that, and neither of us could handle the long-hallway-distance relationship. Although we graduated from the same high school, we have virtually no memories of one another after third grade. And even then, my memories are fuzzy. Lori remembers us playing with my model horses on the steps of our house and I remember her being in my childhood bedroom—but beyond that, nothing.

But then Facebook (glorious Facebook) reunited us. I’ve been reunited with a lot of old classmates through Facebook, most of whom I don’t remember. So reuniting with Lori shouldn’t really matter, except that I fell a little bit in love. I saw in Lori a childless and more interesting version of myself (and isn’t that always why we fall in love…because we see in the other the potential for whom we could be?). She lives in the middle of nowhere in Idaho, where she and her husband built their own house. She plays the cello. She loves dogs and the mountains and backpacking. She also loves horses, although she doesn’t own one. Instead, she and her husband own a plane and spend a lot of time flying to remote locales (they just logged 4,600 miles on a nearly two-month trip to Mexico). And she’s a really amazing photographer (check out her work here).

Now before I scare you and, more importantly, Lori (who’s likely Googling “restraining order” as she reads this), I’m not obsessed. I swear. And I realize that, like any virtual relationship, the person I’ve created in my mind is probably not who she really is. The fact is, I don’t know Lori. Not really. There’s a good chance she and I could meet for coffee someday and have nothing to talk about beyond our pixilated memories of third grade. But I can’t help but feel like I’ve found in her that sliding door that shows me a little bit what my life would have been like had Dave and I stayed in New Mexico and not had children—but without the plane or the cello or the photography and carpentry skills. We exchange occasional emails and I live vicariously through her adventures that seem so much more interesting than my own.

That’s not to say I don’t think I have an interesting life. It’s just that it’s mine, so I know it. I’ve wandered its hallways and poked into its dark corners and memorized the wallpaper. I imagine even the most interesting life becomes mundane when you live it everyday. And when you add the domestic routine of life with children, “rote” is pretty much a given.

Although I would never give up my children for anything—and even in my darkest times as a mother, I know they’ve enriched my life in a way it never would have been had I chosen not to have kids—I have that longing deep within myself to see what could have been. So I turn to my third grade friend, with whom I played horses on the steps of my childhood home, and crane my neck to peer into her world. And as I do, I tell myself it’s okay, that everything works out for the best.

Life got in the way of this week’s blog post. It’s coming…tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest. In the meantime, please enjoy this. My new favorite song, “Roll Away Your Stone” by Mumford & Sons.

Some Sunday nights are different than all the rest.

Some Sunday nights you go downtown to a club to see one of your favorite bands—the Shout Out Louds—with your friends Derrick, Juan, and Skye. But Skye forgets here ID. Even though she’s 38 and a mother, they stamp her hand with the dreaded scarlet letter that tells the bartender not to serve her. Skye is told that if she drinks they will kick her out. You tell her you thought one of the benefits of being middle aged was that you didn’t have to worry about getting busted for underage drinking. But you would be wrong—because the bouncers do indeed watch your friend and she does indeed have a drink and she does indeed get kicked out. She takes the keys to Juan’s car to drive home to get her ID at her house in the suburbs. You shake your head and wonder why club management isn’t more concerned with the 19 year olds there that might be trying to sneak a drink, but whatever. You’re there to enjoy the music, right? You say a silent little prayer of thanks that you remembered your ID.

The opening act is the Freelance Whales, which you like very much, though you quickly realize they take themselves way too seriously…saying things like “You get us,” and “The energy we’re feeling tonight is what we’re going to take with us on the road.” Derrick, Juan, and you do a lot of eye rolling and fake barfing into your drinks. But they sound good and the drinks are good and it’s a Sunday night and you’re not at home doing laundry and making the kids’ lunches, so the fact that the Freelance Whales insist upon themselves is okay. You’re going to let it slide.

Then the Shout Out Louds take the stage and your heart does a few teenage flips.

This is the first show of their North American tour and for some reason that seems to matter. You saw this band three years ago at this same club and have sworn your undying devotion to them ever since. Never mind that the new album isn’t quite as good as their older stuff. It’s good enough and they’re great live and you’ve totally got a thing for the lead singer, which is sad because you’d think you would reach an age where you stopped having crushes on guys in bands from Sweden you don’t know and will never meet. But you haven’t reached that age yet.

Juan observes that the guy working the fog machine seems very excited about that fact, enveloping the stage in enough mist to make you think a miniature Stonehenge will descend from the rafters.

But, my god, the band is good. Great, really. Even the new songs that you don’t like that much sound amazingly good and you don’t even try to wipe the dopey grin stretching ear to ear off your face.

During the encore, Skye returns—ID in hand. She’s missed almost the whole act, but that’s okay. The music doesn’t matter to her as much as the very fact that she’s out and having fun. She and Juan head to the front of the stage to get a copy of the set list. Juan has tried to do this at the last three shows we’ve attended and failed (you can read about one of those times here), but this time, he emerges victorious…holding the set list above his head like a conquering hero returning to the homeland.

And some Sunday nights, after the concert you go down the street to the bar (past the gay sports bar that says under its name: “Join our team”) and find a booth and sit and drink and talk and drink and talk and drink.

And you’re starting to realize that tomorrow is going to be awful. Really, really awful. But that’s okay, because right now it’s totally worth it. And you’ve had just enough to drink to make you think you’re really funny and interesting so you strike up conversations with the bartender and a guy sitting at the bar who tells you his name is Ever and you believe him. You talk about music because what else would you have to talk to about with this guy? Ever is 25. And he thinks your taste in music sucks.

Around one o’clock you and your friends decide that you should probably go home. So you walk to the parking lot and find a chain across it, but the parking attendant is still there, thankfully. He sees Skye and gives her all sorts of crap about how she was supposed to come back over an hour ago and Skye swears he never said that. Poor Skye is having a tough night. But no matter, he lets you have the car—a minivan, because that’s what happens—and you fall asleep in the backseat on the drive back to the suburbs.

Some Sunday nights you stop at a McDonald’s drive thru at 1:30 in the morning and have never been so happy for Chicken McNuggets and a Diet Coke in your life.

Some Sunday nights you fall into bed at two in the morning cursing your lack of self-control and hoping somehow the morning doesn’t ever come. But it does. In five short hours. And you wake up and shower and eat breakfast and take the kids to school and sit down at your desk to work and set your expectations for the day very, very low. And you’re surprised when you manage to write a blog post, even if it’s a crappy one. Because that’s just how it’s going to be today. Some Mondays are like that.

I’m not feeling the blog today, people.

In truth, I haven’t been feeling it much lately. Every time I sit down to write it, I ask myself why? I average about 700 readers a month, but only 150 of those are return visitors. (The rest, for some inexplicable reason, read just this one post. Thanks to whomever out there first forwarded it.) And no offense to those 150 of you, but every Sunday night or Monday morning when I sit down to write my next blog post, I groan and grumble and tell myself that it’s a waste of time. Well, not quite. My internal dialogue goes something like this:

Split Personality 1: I should stop this.

Split Personality 2: Why?

SP 1: Because it’s a lot of work.

SP 2: Really? Three hours per week qualifies as lot of work for you? Wow. I’m surprised the migrant farm workers haven’t contacted you about forming a union.

SP 1: Shut up.

SP 2: You shut up.

SP 1: No, you shut up…

[this goes on for a while]

SP 2: So explain to me how three hours is a lot of work to you?

SP 1: Well, first of all, it’s rarely just three hours. I usually spend a good hour wondering what the hell I should write about. Then the three hours of writing usually turns into four. I should be doing other things.

SP 2: Right. Like checking Facebook?

SP 1: [silence]

SP 2: Like riding your horse?

SP 1: Suck it.

SP 2: Okay, I’m sorry. But I’d like to know. Really. Tell me, what else should you be doing?

SP 1: I do WORK for a living, you know.

SP 2: I’m not sure writing is really considered work, but, okay, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

SP 1: And I’m trying to finish a book I’ve been working on for the last year.

SP 2: Ah, yes, I forgot: The Book.

SP 1: And I have kids and a husband who, believe it or not, would like to spend time with me when my face isn’t illuminated by a computer screen.

SP 2: Then why don’t you spend the time that you typically spend with your horse with your family instead?

SP 1: [Silence.]

So most of me hates the blog. It is the albatross hanging limply around my tired and aching neck. I curse the day I started it! What was I thinking?! I blame my neighbor Jennifer. It was all her idea. “Laura, you need to write a blog!” She’s so convincing, with her kind smile that makes you believe she really wants what’s best for you instead of yearning for your self-destruction, which is clearly her true intent. Effing blog!

But, but, but…

Part of me loves the blog. Having so few readers (and being close friends with half of them) is actually freeing in a lot of ways. I think if I were writing for a broader audience, I’d be more circumspect about what I post. But knowing it’s this intimate little crowd, I let my guard down. I’ll write about the most personal parts of my life without worrying that someone will post a comment telling me what a horrible mother I am, or what a horrible writer I am. (Not that there aren’t people out there who believe both…but they’re quiet about it. God bless their merciful souls.)

And the blog forces me to write, which is good for me, who tends to find too many excuses not to. It’s become a readymade portfolio: I’ve written a lot of stuff here that I’ve been able to use elsewhere (either in parts of The Book or as stand-alone pieces). Plus, the weekly chore of it has helped improve my writing. It keeps me thinking thematically and metaphorically. And I’m beginning to recognize my habits—both good and bad—and trying to nurture the former and slit the throat of the latter. Well, maybe not quite so violent. Maybe I’ll challenge the latter to a dance-off?

Lastly, the blog is a great way for my mom to keep abreast of what’s going on in my life. (I’m not very good with phone calls.)

So the pluses outweigh the minuses. Right? I think so.

Thus I’ll keep writing the blog. But that doesn’t mean I’ll do it happily. Oh, no. Not by a long shot. I’ll keep groaning and grumbling. I’ll still glare at my neighbor Jennifer when I see her. I’ll still say it’s a waste of time and tell myself I should be doing something better with my life. Like checking Facebook. Or riding my horse.

I almost never write about my marriage. That’s not because I don’t have a lot to say about it, I do. But mostly it’s because my marriage is not just mine—it is also my husband’s—and I feel like I should respect his privacy by not writing about it. (You can kiss this blog goodbye the day my kids are old enough and have enough awareness to say, “Mom, stop writing about me.”)

So I’m not going to write about my husband. I’m going to write about me in marriage. But mostly, I’m going to write about the Fantastic Mr. Fox.

For those of you who haven’t seen the movie (which I highly recommend) or read the book (which I would probably also recommend had I read it, but I haven’t), it’s about, you guessed it, Mr. Fox. At the beginning of the movie, he and his wife are stealing birds, because this is something Mr. Fox loves to do. But they get caught in a fox trap, at which time Mrs. Fox tells her husband she’s pregnant, and asks him to promise her that if they get out of the trap alive, he’ll never again steal birds. It’s too dangerous.

Flash forward a couple years and Mr. Fox is now writing a newspaper column that no one reads and saddled with a mortgage he can’t afford and has a teenage son he doesn’t understand. Soon he gets the itch to start stealing birds again—so he does, sneaking behind his wife’s back to do it. Eventually, of course, she finds out, gets really pissed, and says, “Twelve fox-years ago, you made a promise to me when we were caged inside that fox trap that, if we survived, you would never steal another chicken, goose, turkey, duck, or squab, whatever they are. I believed you. Why did you lie to me?”

And he replies, “Because I’m a wild animal.”

I was telling my friend about this a few days ago and how much I identified with Mr. Fox—which is bizarre because, well, he’s a cartoon animal in a kids’ movie, not to mention a man. But of course he’s a man, right? Because in books and movies, it’s almost always the man who has the innate desire to be free and it is the woman who has the innate desire to be tethered (and do the tethering).

But the thing is, I’m not too keen on being tethered. Neither is my friend. What neither of us understands is: why it is unacceptable for women to have that wild animal instinct that wants to dig out of the trap and go steal chickens?

Let me stop for a moment and clarify something: I love my husband and kids. And, for the most part, I love being married. As much as I like to rage against convention, I’m actually pretty traditional when it comes down to it. After all, I married at the age of 25 and had two kids by the age of 33. That’s about as traditional as it gets. Dave and I were talking the other day about why we married so young. We had met at the age of 22 and moved in together a year later. By all measures, we were already married. So why had we rushed to the altar so soon?

Part of our decision was financial. It might sound silly now, but when you’re young and have little money, the idea of saving a couple hundred bucks on car insurance is pretty alluring.

But more than that, we were both certain beyond a doubt that we’d met the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. Dave and I both say now that we didn’t really have a concept of what “for the rest of our lives” meant when we were 25—when things were still new and aging seemed like something that happened to other people. But at the time it felt absolutely right.

Then there’s the other reason I got married when I did: I wanted to be tethered. My life in my early 20s was shadowed by so much uncertainty: What would my career be? Where would I live? Should I go to graduate school? Of course, looking back now, I want to tell myself, “It will all work out. Don’t worry so much.” But when you’re in the throes of upheaval, it’s hard to be all Zen about it. Rather, I wanted some stability in what felt like an otherwise very unstable life.

So the reality is, in those early years, I probably was like Mrs. Fox…wanting to feel permanently connected to something.

Flash forward 14 years and here we are. Those 14 years have been filled with a lot: births and deaths and cross-country moves and career changes. I remember when a friend of mine, whose husband died after nearly 30 years of marriage, described her relationship with her husband, whom she met when she was in graduate school. “We grew up together,” she told me. And so have Dave and I. Every bit of our adult lives has been experienced in lock-step with the other.

And—what do you know?—sometimes I resent that. Sometimes I look at our marriage and say, “But I don’t want to live in lock-step with someone else for the rest of my life! I want to be free to make my own decisions! I want to do what I want and not have you tell me I can’t!” I want to look at Dave and say, “I’m a wild animal,” and demand that he set me free. Because the fact is, I can love him and my children and yet not love the confines of marriage and motherhood.

Some would argue that there are alternatives. There’s no shortage of nontraditional marriages out there—open marriages, spouses who live separately yet stay married and co-parent, polyamorous relationships (although frankly that kind of grosses me out), etc. I was reading an online review of the book Mating in Captivity by Ethel Perel, who (from what I can tell, but disclaimer: I haven’t read the book) prescribes distance between couples in order to keep the marriage alive. As one reviewer wrote: “To love is to merge. Wrong. Merging is what happens when you see the Other as your security. That’s death to sex. Good sex requires a spark. A spark requires a gap. Cross the gap, feel the sizzle. No gap? The best you can hope for is a cuddle.” While I get what they’re saying (as anyone who has been in a long-term relationship knows, there aren’t many surprises in the bedroom after the two-year mark), reading this makes me want to ask, “Then what’s the point of being married?” Because to me, the best part of marriage is the comfort and security that comes along with knowing the other person completely—and that other person knowing me.

Yet as I write that, I know it’s not entirely true. I think all of us have a red velvet rope across our hearts and no one other than ourselves has an all-access pass. For some, that rope is far out at the curb; for others, it’s right at the door—so you can peak in, but not walk through and wander about.

My rope is probably midway between the curb and the door. I know that’s hard to believe given that I pour most of my life out on this blog each week, but in fact, I keep a safe distance from the core of things. Even writing this, I’m telling you very little. I won’t tell you what Dave’s thoughts are on all of this (about me or our marriage), and I won’t tell you any details about the issues we face. And even in my intimate relationships (with people I know beyond their IP addresses, as I know most of you) I tend to keep one arm out and another over my heart. So, in that sense, one could argue that I already do what Perel suggests; that we all do. Because no one can completely know another human being. Not really.

But I take comfort in knowing that Dave knows me better than anyone else, and still loves me. I take comfort in knowing that I don’t have to try with Dave. And I mean that in both the most superficial way possible (I don’t have to shave my legs every day) and the deepest (I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not to gain his love and approval). The idea of being in an open marriage or a marriage where I had to work to maintain some sort of mystery sounds, frankly, exhausting. I don’t want to be mysterious to my husband. I want him to see those dark corners of my heart and mind (and my stubbly legs), and love me in spite of—if not because of—them.

I came across the toast I wrote to Dave for our wedding the other day. As I read it (cringing at my really over-the-top writing…which is no doubt how I’ll someday feel when I read these blog posts), I found myself struck by this one part: “When I’m with Dave, I feel safe…With Dave, I don’t worry that I’m doing something wrong or saying something wrong or just being wrong…I don’t have to feign distance and indifference. I can love him with the intensity I feel and not worry that it will be received with punishing dismissal. With Dave, I feel loved.”

Dave and I have talked a lot recently about what first drew us together. And there it was, in black and white: the feelings of a 25-year-old me (in desperate need of a good editor) telling me why I wanted to get married: because Dave made me feel safe.

But there’s that other side of me that I didn’t write about in that toast—maybe because I didn’t fully understand it yet—the side of me that says, “I’m a wild animal,” and gnaws at the rope tethering me to the front porch.

The better part of my marriage I’ve found myself struggling to balance these two halves—sometimes successfully, sometimes miserably. And I imagine that struggle will continue forever. I doubt I’ll ever be able to claim victory—awaking one day to say, “Wow! I love being domesticated! Everything I want is right here in front of me!” But slowly I’m realizing that I can live peacefully with both parts. It might be an uneasy peace sometimes, but it’s a peace nonetheless. I’m learning that I can live in this state of tension and still be a good wife and mother. I can love my husband and kids even though I sometimes tug at the rope they hold. I’m learning that I can look skyward, see the moon, and howl to greet it, even if I can’t run away to find it.