....turn the view around

Yogis,
I have returned from my first post - covid vacation. Every year we spend the last week of June at the Jersey shore with LOTS of family and our house is the central hub. Being the closest to the beach we house everyone’s beach chairs and umbrellas with our driveway used for overflow parking. The first floor powder room acts as the convenient and appreciated pit stop for all when coming and going.

Pre-covid, the activities didn’t end when everyone trudged off the beach….sandy, hot, tired and happy. Most nights after quick outdoor showers everyone would descend again for large family style meals, ice cream and some evening tv and games. But we knew this year would have to be different.

I began visualizing and planning how to do this all safely. The first and most difficult change was that only those staying in the house would be allowed in, with the one exception of the powder room. In the bag went Lysol and hand sanitizer to be kept on the sink. But how would we do dinners?

When all of these discussions among the troops were first going on, the focus kept coming around to all of the things we weren’t going to be able to do. Cook together. Hang out on the deck. Sit around the big table. Go out to eat on the last night…..all long time traditions. But then it hit me. We were looking at this backward. Whenever there is challenge, there are gifts underneath.

  

If you had told me in mid-April that we were even going to be going I would have disagreed. Yet here I was loading up the car. How grateful I was to be heading up the highway.

I packed a long folding table and some chairs with the idea that we could all have dinner on the driveway and under the carport. And we did. Fifteen or more of us spread out on our beach chairs under the cool pink evening sky eating delicious grilled salmon. How grateful I was to experience the sunsets.

Since our pizza outing was not in the cards, we chose instead to order 9 pizzas and 6 salads one night to share al fresco. As our food frenzy began slowing down, 3 bottles of champagne were popped to accompany my nephew’s announcement of a new baby on the way. The seagulls flew overhead. How grateful I was to be with this ever-expanding family.  

And since everyone is working from home, my sons and grandchildren were all there for extra days. On the evenings we chose to stay quiet, we all talked late into the night. I can’t remember the last time we had such quality time as a nuclear family. Our pod. How grateful I was to wake to the sound of my grandkid’s voices.

I realized as I was packing up at the end of the week that this year all of us spent the majority of our days and nights out in the sea air. The tv sat silent as we all connected under the waxing moon. Life seemed simpler. How grateful am I.

Beneath every challenge there are gifts,
SARAH