jan milliman

I like my new age retreat with a side of 70s suburbia.

I took a class at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck over the summer and brought The Kiddo along. Omega is this sort of idyllic new age retreat that offers courses on topics like past-life regression and teaching yoga to inner city students. Beautiful grounds, daily yoga classes, opportunities for massage treatments, mindful childcare, almost-vegetarian meals in the cafeteria — it all sounds pretty dreamy, right?

But in order to afford this luxury get-away, we opted for the cheap accommodations. This meant we were hiking up and down a steep and rocky hill each day to get to and from our classes. In the steamy heat of summer, it was enough of a task that we tried to bring along everything we needed to get through the day on that first run and stay out until we were ready to fall into bed each night.

We certainly didn’t have it as rough as the gal I met in the bathroom one morning who lamented about her leaky roof, or the couple who had gone the even-more-rustic route of tent camping on the beach only to get rained out all the way to a bed and breakfast down the road. But it was damp, and the kid took a spill and messed up his knee, and one night we were kept up by someone playing what was probably supposed to be mystical relaxation music but by the time it filtered in our window was just creepy and annoying.

Our programs were fun and interesting but, for me, mentally challenging. Combined with the daily hike, this was not the relaxing get-away I had envisioned. It was a rewarding experience, but so much more work than I had anticipated. And the kid was not impressed when he got a glimpse of the luxury that some of our fellow visitors were experiencing.

And so it went – the beauty and peace all around us, and the huffing and puffing and pushing ourselves to various limits. Did I mention the kid gave the trapeze arts a try, just to ratchet up the intensity a bit more?

One night, we took shelter from an especially intense rain storm in the lovely, lotus-shaped Ram Dass library. We moved through the silent rooms, searching for something to read amongst the more than 7000 volumes on all aspects of holistic living. But honestly? I was too tired and too stretched thin to want to read about how I ought to be approaching every aspect of my life differently.

Then, somewhere on a less-crowded shelf upstairs, I found a vintage paperback edition of Erma Bombeck’s “The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.” I started chuckling the minute I opened the book to an excerpt detailing her young son’s poor performance on a sex-ed quiz: “… we had a little quiz the other day on the reproductive organs and he defined every one of them as Askyourfather.” Ahhh, life in 1970’s suburbia! That’s a get-away I can wrap my head around.

Continuing to leaf through this little mass-market oasis, I realized there was an elegant bookplate inside the front cover. There, in lovely calligraphy, I was informed that this precious tome had been donated by none other than Steven “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Covey. Was there no escaping the call to live my best life through Omega’s holistic habit make-over? Or was this maybe a little nudge from the universe reminding me that there’s always room to lighten up in the midst of the struggle?