After living in Miramar Inn for three weeks, I realize we are not on vacation. My mother spends days in bed, never moving, even when we try to shake her. On this day, like all the others, my sister and I forage food from the continental breakfast, just in case we don’t have the money for lunch that day. We make off with our haul to the playground in the dusty field behind the hotel, which is really just a single gray merry-go-round, and we spin and spin and spin, morning light barely breaking the mountain peaks. This morning, like all the others, we try to forget what the world feels like. Our mom runs out to us screaming about running off without telling someone, but then she just keeps on spinning us, and laughs at our oblivious giggles and for a moment, she is not thinking about the hotel we can’t afford, or the food we don’t have, or money that won’t last. She forgets too.
