Day of Rest

As much fun as we had touring in and around Boston Friday, Shabbat was desperately needed.

It’s a little weird to spend Shabbat in a hotel. It’s always difficult to figure out which lights to leave on and which to leave off, and then at some point Saturday morning housekeeping comes in a changes all the lights anyway. And you end up focusing so much on having food that it’s easy to lose sight of all the little things you take for granted at home, like packing candles and matches and other necessities, plugging in the hotplate, unscrewing the refrigerator light, pre-ripping paper towels and toilet paper, and on and on.

Friday night I was pretty glad I had focused so much on food. We ate very, very well this Shabbat: dinner started with an appetizer of lamb stew, followed by short ribs with lemon garlic green beans and potato knishes, and then a cinnamon swirl for dessert. For lunch today our appetizer was chicken fingers, and then Sam had chili-rubbed steak with herbed roasted potatoes and I had General Tso chicken with Jasmine rice, we both had roasted cauliflower with sautéed onions, and dessert was a nutty tort. Not bad for a hotel in Woburn.

[Side note: Sam is amazed at how everything is pronounced in Massachusetts. Gloucester is “glawster”, Woburn is “woo-burn,” and I blew his mind by correcting his pronunciation of Worcester.]

For our road trips, I fill a backpack with cards, travel board games, and reading material. We call it the Magical Bag of Shabbos Fun, because it magically gets us through long afternoons in our hotel room without going stir crazy. (He’s got summer reading to do for school, and he knocked off one of his two books this afternoon.)

Hotel pools tend to be great for that, too, but there’s always the issue of getting to them, getting into them, and getting back into our room without using elevators or electronic keys. Today we were planning to hit the hotel pool when disaster struck: I went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, and suddenly there was water everywhere. The toilet overflowed and water continued to gush out of it. In seconds there were gallons on the floor and it was still coming with no end in sight. I grabbed every towel I could see and started building a dam in the bathroom doorway while I told Sam to run out of our room and find someone who works at the hotel. Somehow he returned just a few seconds later with someone in uniform, who got the water to stop and then left to get someone from maintenance, who in turn fixed the toilet, wet-vac’ed the bathroom, and then went and got someone from housekeeping to come in and clean up. Within 20 minutes, there was little trace that anything had happened. I am happy to say that even though we had a few problems here, everyone–everyone–on staff at the Residence Inn in Woburn really knows what they’re doing.

Anyway, we did end up spending some time at the pool but so did what seemed like every family in the Boston area. Oh well.

The real treat of this Shabbat, aside from the food, was the sleep. We didn’t get enough of it this week so I was thrilled to be in bed before 9pm on Friday. At home we have a ritual that everyone comes into my bed to read, talk, and/or snuggle while all the problems and stress from the week slowly melt away–until one parent starts dozing off, at which point everyone gets kicked out and sent to their respective beds. It’s always one of my favorite parts of any given week. That’s exactly what happened this time, with Sam and I cuddling and discussing whatever happened to be on his mind until the sleep started taking over. At some point my kids will decide that they’re too old for such activities, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.