Vacation With Grown Ups

We're vacationing this week-- taking a brief reprieve from the stresses of every day life and relaxing on  Orange Beach in Alabama, a place that has begun to feel like home away from home.  We've been here, walked these beaches, so many times I've lost count.  We've raised our children vacationing in this very spot.  There are so many memories that they start to blend together with time.  We remember the time we tried our first Dippin' Dots and the time Grant's back got sun burnt, the time a crab clamped onto Jamee's foot and another crab that "chased" my sister. There was the year of the jelly fish, the year of the sea anemone and the year of the duck on a leash.  There were times with extended family and times with good friends.  Some years we played lots of sand volleyball or built sea creatures out of sand or painted ceramic dolphins.  One year Moise hated the sand and many years we rented the beach wheelchair monstrosity.  There were a couple of years when dad stayed home due to work, a year when my best friend came along and the year we introduced our young Finnish friend to this place we love.  Our kids connect Whopper's Robin Eggs, Twizzlers and chocolate Teddy Grahams with our trips to the Gulf.  I can't say exactly the years that all of these things happened.  I only know that they've all melded together into one long beautiful chapter in the story of my children's growing up years; a chapter punctuated with sun kissed faces, wind blown hair and layers upon layers of white sand.

It's been awhile since all eight of us have been here together and that's okay.  Our children are becoming what we've worked so hard to raise them to be.....responsible adults. They have jobs and friends and other  interests that soak up their time and energy.  It's the first time in many years that Jamee has been able to join us but we're minus Grant and Moise.  Grant's spring break didn't coincide with the rest and he has a big trip of his own coming up this summer. Moise?  Well.... he just doesn't love vacations.  They upset his deep need to adhere to routine and he especially hates the sand. We're getting better at leaving him home. He's always left in the very capable hands of our hired caregivers and we desperately need the reprieve from care giving.

Vacationing is different now than it once was.  With the exception of Kruz, who rarely ventures far from my side, we don't need to know where our children are at all times.  Traveling with adult chilren is much less complex than traveling with small, or even teen, children.  We no longer spend vacation days building sand castles, judging diving contests or rubbing sun screen onto little bodies. Instead we take long walks down the beach, play Yahtzee, Knock Rummy or Farkle with our children keeping score.  I take far less photos than I used to because adult children are far less tolerant of the ever present camera in their face. Still, I manage to capture a few candid shots here and there....shots that tell of real life.

Kruz continues to baffle me with all his quirky ways.  The beach is a sensory warehouse that tests him in mighty ways.  When we got here he would crawl, sit and lay in the sand but the second the bottom of his feet hit the sand his whole body went into overload. We've worked diligently on exposure, gently forcing his feet into the sand.  He still doesn't love it but he's tolerating it.  But the ocean water?  He's not having any of it.  It's a cold, unexpected discomfort and he hits freak out mode at the very idea of contact.  So we're letting that one slide.  We've learned to take baby steps and the ocean is one giant step that we'll tackle another year.

This little boy is doted on.  How can he not be with so very many adults and one very precious little one?  It's hard to know where the line is between spoiling him rotten and loving him with all that we have and, in truth, I'm not sure I care.  I'm convinced that his most important role in this life is to bring hope, comfort, healing to grown up hearts.  

There's a sadness tucked away in my heart amidst all the joy and pleasure that this trip has brought.  On Monday I learned that my long ago friend, Kathy, left this world after a fierce battle with cancer. She and I graduated from high school together and then life happened.  She went her way, I went mine.  We lost touch but reconnected in recent years, thanks to social media.  I watched from afar as she fought hard for life, for the sake of her three beautiful children. But it was not to be.  She was full of hope and grace, dignity, selflessness, and so much beauty.

 Being the first of my girlhood friends to leave this earth, her passing has touched a very deep place in my heart. Death, at any age, causes us to take inventory of our life, to cherish that which is important and weed out that which is not. But this......this makes me realize that, suddenly, I am that age.  That age where cancer and heart attacks and other diseases begin to take parents, friends, husbands, siblings, those who've touched  our lives, whom we have created history with.  In Kathy's final days it was clear that love was the only thing that mattered.  I want to live like that..... not just in my final days, but every day.  

 And as we spend this week immersed in the beauty of the sea, enjoying each other's company, soaking up the restfulness, I feel just a little guilty.  Because I know.  I know that for Kathy's children, for her twin brother and other family members time is standing still.  Their world has crumbled while I am on vacation.  I remember that feeling so well.  I remember riding in the car from the church, where Laynee's service was held, to the cemetery, where she was buried. I wondered how people could be out walking and mowing their lawn and going to the bank on a day like this. How could it be a beautiful, sunshiny day when my soul felt so dark?  How could the world keep moving on when mine had stopped? Yet I know that if Kathy were here she would say "Go."    Keep living, keep laughing, keep loving.  Right up to the very end.  

I'm trying.  Sometimes I fail, but I'm trying my very best to make the most of the time that's left.  

 God is good, all the time.