I leave for Vancouver tomorrow morning, a business trip. How will I feel when the plane circles to land? I always felt a rush of exhilaration, landing. I was the luckiest person in the world on the approach towards the north shore mountains, our mountains, coming home to our extraordinary city. Rainforest walks and thousand-year-old trees and downtown beaches and cherry-blossomed streets and hidden islands and white peaks…

It's an illicit getaway with my mistress. Relentlessly bewitching, she is.

First time away from the boy for more than an evening. Six days of alone time, grown-up time. Time during which I won’t be called on to rescue, to squidge, to upright, to tickle, to wipe or to squish. I am officially clocked out: daddy, grammy and grampa are clocked in, bless them. Time for me to be devotedly on the job, revive the me of two years ago, disallowed from fishing sweats out of the dirty laundry pile. It’s clicky-shoe time.

That’s the magic word, isn’t it? Time. For six days it will all belong to me, to do with whatever I please. I will spend too much money on sushi and teeny-tiny beers. I will not sing skinnamarink. I will write and write and write, working with people who are much like me. I might even feel like my old self again.

Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of.