Photography by Lori K. Tate
I have long suspected that my children are smarter than I am, and last Thursday, my daughter proved it. We were winding down our vacation on Bald Head Island, one of my favorite places on the planet, and I was sulking about having to go home. (Picture a toddler kicking her sand bucket across the beach in disgust and that was me.) In the middle of my whining rant, Margot said. “Mom, if we were here all of the time, we wouldn’t appreciate it.”
Good God, she was right, really right, but I still didn’t want to leave.
Last week was the best vacation our family ever had — really. Sure, Bald Head, with its sylvan environment punctuated with Kermit green marshes, boutique deer population and precious grocery store, is an awesome place, but it was more than that.
We had this same trip planned for last year, but we had to cancel it at the last minute when mom was given four to six weeks to live. Then six months after mom passed away, we entered COVID-19 world, where anything you’re accustomed to is stripped away or rearranged to the point where you no longer recognize it. Needless to say, it’s been a rough year.
Like so many families who have suffered or are suffering more, my family needed space to heal and simply connect with each other, as well as nature. That’s what happened as soon as we stepped off of the ferry, and that’s why I didn’t want to leave. But as Margot pointed out, the power of getting away is in the return.
So on Saturday, we took the ferry back to the mainland, loaded our minivan and returned to our Covid Cabana (I made that up!) with a sense of renewal and perspective. On the way home, I made the executive decision to make our house as peaceful as the house we rented on vacation, and the first step of that process is clearing out clutter. Though we’re not hoarders, we have a lot of stuff, stuff we don’t need and stuff that fills space we do need.
With a month until remote learning begins, I vowed to clean out as much of our home as I can to give our family a fresh start. For the past two nights, I’ve been going through jewelry boxes, looking at class rings, beaded bracelets and my mom’s butterfly brooches. While helping me, Margot spotted a purple plastic half-heart on a cord. “You have the other half,” she said with surprise, adding that she had the same necklace upstairs but didn’t know who had the missing piece.
I smiled, remembering how we won the “Best Friend” necklace at the beach playing skee ball (my favorite sport). She was a toddler and when she looked at the necklace with her big blue eyes and gave me the other half, I felt like I had won the lottery. Of all the people in the world, she chose me to be her best friend. I’ve kept the necklace in my jewelry box ever since. It’s worth more than diamonds, and seeing her face light up when she saw it the other night was priceless.
Moments like these are the ones that we have to cling to in our uncertain world no matter if we’re on vacation or not. This is the stuff you can’t plan or pay for, these are the Winks of Goodness that keep us going when we want to kick the sand bucket and run away. Thank goodness our children know better.