Still True to My Inner Beach Bum

When I was young and not accountable to a husband, seven kids and a rigorous schedule, I always escaped to the beach the minute I had enough cash.  I spent two consecutive summers in Spain, where sandy stretches of the Mediterranean consumed weeks of my time.

This picture was taken by my 14-year-old daughter on a recent trip to Miami for her fourteenth birthday, accompanied by Mom (me) and Baby Sister.  My husband and I surprised her with the trip, whisking her off to the airport, only to have our flight cancelled by freezing rain.  In fact, that Band-aid on my elbow was a result of the wintery conditions we were trying to escape!

When we finally sunk our toes into the hot sand, something warm and essential was restored to our souls.  My birthday daughter felt it. Even the baby felt it.  She ate big fistfuls of sand, gleefully gumming the gritty mess.  I didn't care.  A beach bum does not fret if her baby eats sand.  A beach bum turns her face to the sun, knowing that, unlike the grains of sand we let fall from our thawing fingers after a long, snowy winter, our beach days are finite.  Each one is to be savored, even if that means literally savoring the sand.

Ten-Year-Old Trip at the Tuileries

 Our family has a wonderful tradition of taking each child, individually, on a "Ten-Year-Old Trip."  Last October the child was our son, Freestone, and the destination was Paris.  It's supposed to be a one-on-one, but we had a little hitchhiker on this trip, baby Tziporah.  We thought it would be fun to take a baby along, and we were right on so many levels.  All of Paris is in love with babies.  Tziporah was universally adored everywhere we went, by old and young alike.  One stern, old gentleman on a bus even pulled a fake Cyrano de Bergerac nose from his breast pocket and put it on to make the baby laugh!  If babies bring out the best in people, so do ten-year-old boys.  It's a magical age for the awkward, imaginative, lanky little creatures, and the perfect age to bond with a baby sister.  Ten-year-old boys are great travelers, too.  They don't care about the tourist stuff, they just want to relax and be happy.

On this afternoon in the Tuileries, I tried to convince my son to rent a sailboat, but he was content to toss his sister in the air and listen to her giggle.  At one point, my husband wanted to call it a day, but I said, "We will never be here in these gardens with these two children at these ages, ever again.  Let's just stay awhile."  We did, and it was an afternoon whose fluffy clouds and autumn breeze will be forever in my heart.