Great Expectations

 You would think that while in Paradise, there could be nothing to get in your way of having just the most wonderful time. Especially since we've been in some pretty crummy settings and just had a ball anyway. But then, even if you are dirt poor and have actual access to a beach, you can put your toes in with the rest of the bourgeoisie people and you're all on equal ground, because God's gorgeous creation trumps everything. Ken and I always head to the beach with our grown kids, usually every May. We share a big ole house and it's a cheap vacation for everyone. There's lots of kids and mayhem and we come home exhilarated and exhausted from all the goodness. So he likes for he and I to take a separate trip, later, to have time alone and remember who we are, to reconnect, relax and reignite. This year, because Liz and Marcus have their first newborn, the family decided to do our big trip in September. Ken desperately wanted a beach trip in May, so here we are…

There was hardly anything available, not surprising since Covid has kept a lot of people from traveling up until now. And everything was expensive. I booked a sweet place, in a darling, quaint village in Sandestin. It's a convoluted, manufactured village, not one made of collected years and layers of entrepreneurs…but a planned community. That should have been my first clue. We're not people who are naturally inclined to Disney-like vacations. Not that this was Disney, and not that I might not want to go there someday. But we've just never swam with the pack. We're more likely to swim upstream and away from the general crowd. We think that's normal, but apparently it's not. 

The night before we left, I realized that there is no kitchen in our little condo. This is bad, because I eat a special diet that involves "normal" food. Do you know how hard that is to find, in our current culture? There's never enough veggies or fruit, and everything is dipped and cooked in vast gobs of oil, if you go out to eat somewhere. So suddenly, I'm faced with the fact that we will have to eat out most of our meals, expensive and fattening. 

We arrive to our place and walk down to the wharf, with a sweet, gentle breeze blowing. We enjoyed an hour and then headed to our room. After deciphering the masses of codes that it took to get inside the parking deck, then the door code to the condo, then the code to our place…my brain began to scramble and I wondered how I might ever detach from my phone. I needed it for all those codes. Then there was the wifi password, passcode to the pool and not to forget the card to get on the tram that takes you to the beach. But all that is worth it, when you finally get to sink your hinder parts into that white, warm, silky sand. The next morning, we threw all our beach stuff into a bag and hauled it down to the tram pick-up site. This was going to be great. No long trek to the water…they just drop you off and there's even a restaurant right there. As we made our way over the little berm of sand, we were completely unprepared for the sight in front of us. We've been to the beach so many times over the last 39 years, I've lost count. But I've never seen a place where there were literally thousands of people crowded like sardines for as far as the eye could see. We knew there was water somewhere, but where? We wound our way around legs, towels, canopies all the way to the shore. We found a tiny speck of land, right by the ocean, where we could park our chairs. There wasn't even room to lay out our towels. Ken told me later he really wanted to just turn around and head home right then and there, but couldn't bring himself to disappoint me. So we put our chairs close together, with the cooler close by. The water was so cold, I could not stand to get in, which is big for me. I'm actually part mermaid, but not a northeastern one. So we passed a couple of hours, each wondering how we got here. Neither of us said anything negative…just wanted it to work. At this point, we were both contemplating the logistics of a whole week of this. Then, of course, the next day, the bottom fell out and it began raining. Like buckets for days.

As we holed up in our place and gave up hope of any grand adventures, I remembered why we were here. To rest, unplug, talk to each other, think about  nothing and everything. We live in what has been a blessed life, far more blessed than we deserve. I remember lean times, where we scraped all we had together to eat peanut butter and jelly for days, a house full of loud and hilarious kids. Then there were times of harvest, when we got to indulge in steak and fancy Italian water. None of it means a thing if you can't be thankful in the moments or if you are looking for some pie in the sky that may or may not happen. My children's old pediatrician once said, "Life is good, even if you are just watching the sunset from a gutter." I think she might be right.