She Went on 'Holiday' Alone — Twenty Minutes from Home

My name is Yue Dugu (alias). I had booked a flight to another state, to hide alone for a few days — and the night before, my child spiked a fever, and the whole trip was cancelled. I sat on the sofa looking at my open suitcase and remembered the membership I had applied for and been approved for long before, the one I had never quite allowed myself to use; the address had been sitting in my phone, sent to me alone, all that time. That day I sent a message: is there any way to make today feel like I actually went? The answer came quickly: yes — change the holiday into the travelling kind. The care would bring the whole ritual with it and meet me at the little house I booked by the sea in Santa Monica. No cancellation. Just a different way of travelling.

No security lines, no departure boards. At the house, slippers were set by the door first, my sandals taken away, warm tea placed in my hand, and sea air coming through the window seam with its salt on it. I changed without lifting a finger, the robe freshly warmed; the bath was attended throughout, a light floral scent in the steam, and standing in that warm water, listening to the waves arrive in turns, I felt the holiday begin. The morning was a fragrant bath and Balinese care; at midday I ate a light lunch slowly and napped in the chair by the window — waking, for a moment, not knowing where I was. Light leaking through the curtain seam, flowers in the air, the weight of the blanket: everything was right; only the 'which hotel is this' was missing.

The afternoon held the full ritual. Warmth arrived first at my scalp, as sea wind touches a forehead first. Then the warm, silky Nuru liquid covered my shoulders and back — smooth, close, unhurried — travelling down my spine to my waist, to legs that had walked the sand all morning, to feet and toes still remembering the seawater. The pacing was loose but full, like a well-made itinerary: rising slowly, deepening, pausing to let the feeling settle, then rising again. As sleep and the sound of the waves came over me together, one sentence formed itself: today, from the crown of my head to my toes, no inch of me has been left behind by life.

Before the close, at sunset, came the passage I had looked forward to all holiday: the Yoni private care. In a room by the sea I was shyer than usual about asking — yet my terms were what steadied me: my pace, stoppable at any moment, every approach announced first. As warmth and patience opened me slowly, with the evening light leaning through the curtain seam, I took one quiet breath under the blanket. The essence of a holiday was never distance. It is ransoming yourself out of the everyday, and then being cherished — steadily, ceremoniously — until you remember whose life it is. For those minutes I was not anyone's mother or anyone's colleague. I was Yue Dugu, a woman being treated beautifully.

Anyone who raises children knows what 'holiday' used to mean for me: parenting, in a different postcode. So the true luxury of that day was not the sea view and not the ritual. It was that nobody needed me. Nobody called for Mama. Nobody asked where anything was. Even my phone lay quietly in my bag, asking for nothing. As the warmth crossed my back I felt held up as if by water, my arms opening of their own accord, my breathing lengthening by itself; the scent held flowers and sea-salt together, like the yard at my grandmother's house in the summers of childhood. Half dreaming, I thought: when my child is older I will tell her — your mother is not a machine that never tires. Your mother takes holidays too, and takes them without a shred of apology. That day was not an escape. It was a lesson I had owed myself for years: be Yue Dugu again first, and the 'Mama' will be done better for it.

As the light failed I called home from the doorway, my voice loose: I'm back. The drive took twenty minutes, and that day was worth flying out for three. Now I tell everyone: real luxury isn't far away — it is being able to disappear for a whole day inside your own city. Next time I may not even book the little house. The travelling ritual can come home with me; the weekend the children are at their grandmother's, I am keeping for the sea air, and for myself.

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