the beach

I don't know if there are blogging rules pertaining to timing or not, but this post is about something that happened a couple of weeks ago and not something current. I hope I'm not breaking any blogging conventions.

I won't go into the story behind our beach trip, but suffice it to say, this trip meant more to my siblings and I (and our brother-in-law, Stew) than just a nice getaway. This trip was several years in the making and was meant to be a healing time. It was just that, as we all stepped back in time a bit and let the child in us float to the surface. We played in the surf, we hunted for shells, we sat in our beach chairs for countless hours, we sometimes drank our coffee in the early morning with our toes in the surf and the breeze in our faces, and we moved amongst each other, sometimes staying close to each other and relishing the unspoken bonds and sometimes retreating to our own space where we each looked within ourselves to see what was left- what was too damaged to save, what might be salvaged, and what seeds there were for growing something new.

We ate too much, slept often, laughed a lot, got sunburned (we're Irish/Scottish for gosh sakes) but not too bad, had a close encounter with a roving gaggle? of raccoons (actually he was quite polite and seemed hurt when we shooed him off our 2nd floor balcony), and after 8 days, realized we wanted to stay a lot longer.