Traveling

Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling

That's what Holly Golightly's calling card reads in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's...

Always on holiday, always traveling, always lightly.

In fact, her apartment is full of unpacked luggage and boxes.

To Miss Golightly, traveling was a state of existence. It didn't mean she was physically traveling...though she did that too...

In the past few weeks, I've felt that way. I've been in a traveling state of mind.

Not physical traveling so much as mental and emotional traveling. Out of my normal routine. Away from what's familiar.

And not that soul-searching, solitary type of emotional traveling either...

More like the kind of emotional traveling when a group of folks are all thrown together into a situation and they have to figure out how to navigate time, space and each other.

For the past couple of weeks, I was helping my brother take care of his four girls while their mother traveled to Italy. Well...and...I also asked my other brother's three girls to come too. Plus Jack, that makes eight...and me. And my brother too when he wasn't working, thank God.

Gone from the daily "do" that we all create for ourselves.

And into the world of childhood adventure...eating candy before dinner, catching sand crabs, riding the bus and thinking it was fun, playing in the ocean, getting too much sand in the bottom of my bathing suit, losing at putt putt golf, and all the while...managing sand, sunscreen, feedings and safety...yes, they all lived.

I can now better appreciate what it must be like for working parents with multiple children...somewhere in all that hustle and bustle...and laughter...and childhood mishaps...you just don't have time for yourself.

It was good for me to travel to that place again. To remember what it was like to feel those amazing joys when a kid dives through her first wave and screams "awesome", orders rainbow sprinkles on her donut, putts a hole-in-one, flies her first kite...And those moments of concern when one niece fractures her foot (yes, it happened) and another breaks a wire on her new braces...And then, when you think there's time to breathe, there isn't. Because it's time for another meal, chop up the fruit, pour the milk...these kids need to be healthy...run to the store to get another loaf of bread..."Can we get ice cream again?"..."Aunt Susan, I don't have any clean clothes left?" "Do I have to eat this?" "I lost my sunglasses in the ocean...*sniff" "Who got sand in the chips bag?" etc etc...

But the big kids can ride to the grocery store, and one cousin helped by giving the littlest a bath, and the older girls can do laundry...so it all works out.

I wish I could have taken pictures...but it's hard to carry a camera bag when you need an extra hand to carry a water bottle, the lunches, someone's forgotten flip flops or when little legs get tired and they need a piggy back.

I admit it. Raising Jack is very different compared to all those girls...let's just say there's a lot less drama...

He's definitely the quiet one in the midst of all those clucking hens. By the end of last week, our group thinned out. Jack wanted to fly his kite and I remembered to take my camera to the beach.

And they have free lessons from 6pm-9pm down at the boardwalk...

We bought Jack a new stunt kite for his birthday and he gave his old kite to his Uncle and cousins...

And finally, I was able to capture some of the joy of the week...

And the goofiness...

And the fun of flying kites.

And the teamwork required...

And it makes me sad that I missed capturing all the other moments of the prior two weeks...all because it was too hectic. And I vowed that next time, I wouldn't let that happen.

And I'd be fibbing if I said I didn't think about needlework.

In fact, the final task of the boardwalk scavenger hunt was to find my favorite store between 8th and 9th streets. It was Salty Yarns, a beautiful beachside needlework store, which I'll tell you about next week...

And we did start salvaging weathered fabric from broken and discarded beach chairs for a future project...

But I'll tell you more about that later too.

Good Monday everyone. It's nice to be home.

But it's not for long. We're taking friends from Japan to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday and Jim's mom is coming on Thursday to go on our family vacation to the beach. This time Jim gets to come too.

I hope to get around soon and see what you've been up to...