Vacation / Home

Every morning when I take AugDog outside for his first walk of the day, I have this weird sensation - like a movie flash-back scene - that I am 10 years old and on a family vacation. Something about the cool humidity, the smell of the magnolia blossoms and honeysuckle sweetness of the air, the unfamiliar tree line. It just *feels* so much like those summer mornings stepping out of a budget hotel sort of near the beach where my family would stay for a few days in Florida or South Carolina when we could afford a trip.

We only went to the East Coast two or three times, but all of those vacations were during my Great Oceanic Obsession, so the time between when I woke up and got myself dressed and packed my little beach bag and the time my whole slow-moving family finally crunched into the sedan and headed for the water was torturous. If there was a balcony or even stairwell at the hotel, that's where I would be. Smelling the ocean smells, clutching the railing with white-knuckled impatience, trying to remember what salt water tastes like and rehearsing my forward crawl and shoving my Great White fears as far out of my head as they would go.

Almost six months in to this southern experiment and it still feels more like Vacation than Home.

That's OK. We're slowly trying to get into a groove. Les was approved to become a Big Brother through Big Brothers/Big Sisters, so with that new commitment we are solidly set here for at least a year. Which would wrap up my original 18 month commitment to HFH. I'm not convinced that we will bust out the packing tape and boxes on June 1 of next year, but it is oddly comforting to "know" as well as anone can know about such things as life and plans that we're committed to 12 more months. No more, no less. That's something. I'm not making a paper chain or anything, but it feels like a manageable parameter.

I hope to get out to the beach at least a few times between now and June 1, 2013. I'm far less eager to put on a bathing suit than I was 25 (gulp!) years ago, and my fear of sharks is only bigger thanks to Shark Week and Jaws, but the smell of the sea and the crash of the waves and the sand under my feet is still one of the simplest, purest joys I know.