I’ve spent a lot of time lately with my new in-laws. Well, okay, technically they’re not really my in-laws because I’m not yet married, but I still think of them this way. Especially because I can’t get legally married. But that’s not what I want to write about here.

Steve, who is married to my partner’s sister, is a technogeek like I am. Of course, he has a Kindle. (For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past four years, Kindle is an e-book reader branded and sold by Amazon.com.) Last time I looked, he had a mix of books on it – from business and history titles purchased on Amazon to free books downloaded from Google as part of the Gutenberg project. Steve believes that e-books are going to someday replace paper books.

Alice, my partner’s 85 year-old mother, worries that Steve might be right.

Although I think Steve is super smart, I’m not sure he’s right about this one. Even though I did see a 70-something man in an Ashland coffee shop reading the Wall Street Journal on his iPad. (I mean, come on! The WSJ in full color anywhere you can grab a signal? How fabulous is that? Makes me almost want an iPad) I realize the WSJ is a newspaper and newspapers have all sorts of problems of their own quite different from the world of book publishing, but I still don’t think that Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos is going to bring down the book or the New York Times.

People want a sensory experience when they read. They want to feel paper under their fingers, hear the sound of a page turning, smell newsprint or a musty old book. While HTC and Apple may be able to use haptic technology to give us a reasonable facsimile of using your finger to flip a page, they’ll never be able to truly replicate the feel of a yellowed, brittle paperback page. Or the smell of said page.

The following story gives me hope: Books’ power to connect is as potent as ever. It’s about kids finding redemption in the stories of Sherwood Anderson. Sure, they could have read Anderson on their Kindle (and it would have only cost them $.99 for the download), but something tells me these folks had the old Signet Classic edition or maybe the Norton critical edition. And if a book — a single book — can inspire a classroom of strangers to tell their secrets, who knows what a whole library can do.

I’ve spent the last six weeks in a state of extreme stress.  I’ve awakened almost every day — and multiple times during the night — with cortisol flooding my system.  The notebook by the side of the bed for panicked list-making, the glass of wine, the Lunesta, the Chinese herbs, the acupuncture, the meditation, the meditation MP3, the gym (twice daily sometimes), none of it helped consistently. 

So I just went with it.  Because what my body really wanted was to do nothing.  Which wasn’t really an option there for a while. 

At least that’s the story I told myself. 

And maybe it was partly true and partly because I am a hyper-vigilant oldest child.  Maybe it is because in this modern world we believe we should always be doing something (proofing a document, checking email, updating our Facebook status, cleaning the lavatory, paying bills, organizing the toolshed).  Maybe it’s because I’ve been so busy for so long (mother’s illness; graduate school; divorce; moving once, twice, three times, four; father’s illness and death) that I’ve forgotten that it’s okay to simply sit still — or if not sit still, to simply do exactly what I want to do.  But since Thursday afternoon that’s all I’ve been doing, simply doing what my body wants — which has been to:

…nap on a Saturday afternoon — even if it is sunny out.

…go to the farmer’s market and buy fresh produce.

…cook my beloved a multi-course meal while bluegrass streams in via Pandora.

…ride bikes so long my head is quiet.

…paddle quietly up the Columbia slough.

…see Toy Story 3 in 3D and laugh at how silly looking a theater full of people wearing dorky glasses is.

…pray at the church of the New York Times and read about San Francisco’s weird ice cream man and the quadruple amputee who should inspire us all.

…drink coffee on the balcony and watch the weather change.

…read good, honest writing.  Like my friend, Erin’s blog.

…realize I love nonfiction so incredibly much that I will even buy a memoir for sale at the butcher shop (“Red Tide” about salmon fishing in Alaska and is incredibly well-written).

A few years ago, one of my sisters said to me, “I just wish it could be like it used to be, kids playing in the backyard, swimming, and not worrying about anything.  I just want to go back to 16 San Felipe Way.”  And I’ll admit, at first I thought, wow, how very magical thinking of you.  But now, I understand the sentiment behind the statement because all I want is a summer off.  I want to do this the old fashioned way — which means without Lunesta or Wellbutrin or Prilosec.

I don’t need a mother to cook me dinner or do my laundry.  But I do need time to lie on my back and look at the clouds (which in Oregon means almost every day) and not worry about deadlines or the strange noise the truck is making or whether I remembered to pay my and my parents’ electric bills. 

Of course, I still need to work, finish up the last of my grad school duties, and manage my father estate.  So my question is, what’s your favorite way to recharge without simply dropping out?