Mula Hula

A Mula is Mandatory Unpaid Leave of Absence. Call it a furlough if you prefer. It means you are unemployed, at least for a week, or maybe its two weeks, or maybe someone is just calling it a ‘furlough,’ but you know the real word is ‘layoff.’

Call it what you want.

I call it the Mula Hula. It’s a new dance craze.

Some people are dancing to just barely keep those hoops from touching the ground. Other people have decided that it’s the chance of a lifetime – they are showing off those sweet behinds and enjoying the dance.

It is some combination of attitude, financial stability, and plain, old-fashioned faith that everything will be just fine.

Anyway, we have our health. It is just money. We can always go live with your brother, right? They keep dancing – smiling at least some of the time.

My husband has been awarded a few weeks of Mula Hula over the next year. I have a half-dozen friends who have actually been laid-off. And, the truth is, we DO have our health and ingenuity and that little chump change that is left of our savings. We are planning to enjoy the dance. (After all, I DO have a pretty sweet behind for my age, or at least I did when I last looked back there a decade ago).

And now, you understand why we bought Jessie Marie (known for two days as Bessy G II, until Andrew and Gladys announced her name had changed).

I have a few weeks to wrestle with Cleveland City Hall to make sure her name is right on the birth certificate (okay, a little sick humor). And then, we go out West in an F-150 off-road pick-up truck hauling a 26-foot trailer into the sunset.

I am alternately excited and dumbfounded. I never, ever expected to own a trailer. Ever!
But, I really do want to show our kids every inch of America, one mile at a time. We can leave whenever we want. The kids can throw a dart at the U.S map and we’ll go there.

My husband and I have been to 17 time zones together. The rest of the world still beckons me. The first time I traveled overseas, I was 17 years old and without my parents. It did me good. You never truly understand America until you leave it behind.

Our kids will need to experience that too.

When they do, they will remember dancing through mile after mile of America.

And, they will understand why a little Mula, still makes their parents Hula.