Halcyon on and on
The day after we arrived at M’s mum’s house the tension was thicker than the sweetest oxygen. I left the room crying on Christmas morning. After that, I kept my head low and dared not speak unless spoken to.
The same thing happened last Christmas too, M’s mum confided later, and she was the one who left crying. She went shopping for hours afterward so she might heal. So this year’s impulse for a getaway, though sudden, made all the sense in the world.
Five of us crammed into M’s car and drove to the hot springs nearby — we are quite lucky to be near so many here — and we soaked for several hours in the sulphurous pools. It was good to float. (Well, I tended more to sink.) I love water. I suspect I would wilt and die if I could not live near a large body of water.
I could scratch off this item on the list but, to be frank, I was a little disappointed. The hot springs I grew up knowing about were not mere swimming pools filled with steamy hot water that smelt funny. In the manga I read as I was growing up the hot springs had stone steps and stone walls and was mostly a wild place, except for the little bathhouse that neatly blocks its entryway. There were no spas or restaurants that gouge you simply because there’s nothing else within reasonable driving distance.
So I’m amending this goal to be “visit a (more) natural hot spring” because damn, this kinda sucked.
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