Saturday, April 22, 2006

Last Night In The Sun 

Sunset over Delray Beach


Technically it's another night, back on the Barnes and Noble balcony squeezing a few final hours out of yet another whirlwind week in the heat and humidity. The kids sleeps soundly back at the cubanero rental, resting up for the long haul back North tomorrow.

Sunday will bring two planes, car returns, driving to and from. Apple juice in the lab again, surely -- I can feel the weight of baggage literal and metaphorical as if I had brought it here into the cool breeze. Work and school again in the early morning the following day loom ahead. Monday comes ever too soon.

It hasn't been all sunshine and light. The strain of travel got to the elderchild early this time around. Having a DVD player in the rental car got a bit too good; by the end, we could do little to top it; the contant threat to leave her in the car became more promise than anything.

In the end, this week's lessons include the sad truth that there's little to relax about when you're traveling with two wee ones. It occurs to me in the midst of our final highway drive home this evening, Willow whining about Cassia screaming, that it is a rare moment indeed for all four to be in sync, but so easy for one to drag the others down. Fun with children on the road is a frantic affair, much like chasing a high.

Into every swim a little sand must scrape, I suppose. But what a swim, and how warm the water. They're a handful, and I love them dearly. And no childless couple could ever know the sheer joy that is four of us, big to little, in those everrare moments of smiles and light.

Willow was so sweet with her old prep school friends today, disbursed souls like ourselves, now Floridian transplants happy to welcome us into their tiny townhouse. Cassia's knees are bloody from falling down in short pants, but she turns around so quickly, smiling, moving on, it's hard to imagine her as the tiny infant she was when we first set off on the road, bereft of home, prospects uncertain, the last time we hit sand and surf.

And so we move on, ever the wanderers, ever on the road, always together. The sun sets on another vacation. But somewhere, it is always rising, floating into the sky, light as my heart when they are by my side.

posted by boyhowdy | 9:57 PM |

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Comments:

welcome back to the rainy north. i've been to Del Ray, my aunt and uncle live there.

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:05 PM, April 23, 2006

 

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