If you've never lived on a boat or gone cruising, you might wonder why we might sometimes need a vacation from the boat. "You're already vacationing in Paradise - how could you possibly need a vacation?" is a question we receive on occasion. But daily life on a boat is a special kind of intensity that you can't imagine unless you've been there, and everyone there needs a break once in a while, a reset of sorts. The past few months have left us deeply fatigued, with the heat and the political climate and the devastation the storms rendered on some of our favorite cruising grounds. We have a significant need of one of those resets to get us out of the funk. Ours came in the form of family visits to two of our three girls and six of our soon-to-be ten grandchildren in St. Louis.
This visit was scheduled apart from any holiday in an attempt to be back to the boat before grandchild #10 was born in December and also to hopefully avoid the holiday gift that keeps on giving in the form of the latest flu virus. It just happened to coincide with the turning of the leaves and, while it was a bit nippy for thin-blooded Florida travelers, offered many sunny days to walk to parks and play outside.
The first visit to the park was with our St. Charles granddaughter. After spending some time on the playground, we ventured along the path and found a colorfully painted rock hidden in a dip in the bark of a fallen tree. It turns out that there is a new fad of hiding rocks with pretty pictures and happy sayings painted on them where others can stumble on them. They're called Kindness Rocks and their entire goal is to make people happy. They must be working, because my granddaughter had a big smile on her face and, soon after, found some to paint and hide herself.
The visit to our city-dwelling grandkids offered a backyard bonfire and s'mores with some neighbors, a cool night where the fire was welcome and the aroma of hickory sparked a stroll down the memory lane of camping trips. Later in the week, we had a chance to share some coffee and conversation with good friends from our early sailing days on Carlyle Lake, a conversation that lasted till we were kicked out at closing. Even though the week was packed with soccer and school, time was allowed for some walks through Tower Grove park as well as some long walks through the Flora Avenue park near their home. A few brief moments into the walk today yielded some happy squeals from the kids, who had found a Faerie house nestled in the cleft of the trunk of a rather large tree. Having been so isolated from the popular and trendy for so many months, I was unaware of the Faerie house movement, where kids and some grownups are making tiny little houses at the base of trees in parks and yards to welcome the Wee Folks and pass along a smile in the doing of it. Today on our walk we counted 34 of them in all stages of intricate and whimsical. Along the way, we enjoyed the peak of the leaf season, a pileup of leaves in which to jump, and a visit to our favorite ice cream parlor, Ices Plain and Fancy.
Tomorrow we make our way back. It will be difficult to leave the kids. Our near future plans are uncertain, the political climate shows no indication of changing, and then there's always the fact that Tim still has a couple months of work left to grind through. But we'll leave here refreshed. In addition to our bags, we carry with us a feeling of hope, a sureness that this new generation will find a way to restore life as it should be: a life full of kindness, laughter, whimsy and imagination.
