Vacation!
Vacation
We walked into J.F.K. International airport on July 1, 2021, with so much excitement, it did not matter that just to get to the TSA security checkpoint took us an hour. Martin my husband, and I were flying to our happy place, our favorite island in the world Aruba! We were going to celebrate his birthday and our anniversary. The one thing we looked forward to being was doing nothing slow.
In past years once we arrived in Aruba, we would jump up early in the morning and run down to Eagle Beach to get the best cabana. We had our rituals, we had to eat by a certain time, we had to stay on the beach until a certain time, we had to get our Sunday massages, take a drive out to Baby Beach, take a day to just go shopping. This time everything would be so different, the first full day we slept late and took a slow stroll down to the beach. There were empty cabanas, the beach was peaceful and the water warm and clear. It took us only minutes to realize all the things we did in Aruba prior to COVID were irrelevant. We blessed to even feel the sand under out toes.
I remember staring out at the water on the third day, the sun was perfect, my tan was golden, and I felt such a sense of peace. The last time I was in Aruba summer of 2019 I left so sick I did not know if I would ever return. The last time I was in Aruba I still had my mother, my children still had their father, my beautiful young cousin Lachaundra was still alive as well. The last time I left Aruba so sick I could hardly get onto the plane home. In that moment I cried for the changes and realized I needed every moment of this trip to vacate. I rarely checked my social media pages, I explained I had no interest in going live on Facebook. Instead, we had long conversations with each other and random strangers on the beach. We met a couple during dinner one night and we offered to be their tour guide for the rest of the evening, they are our new friends.
Too often we go on vacation and fill our days with endless, tours and activities, I am not knocking the thrills and adventures. Sometimes you need to relax and seize the moment do nothing so you can hear and find new perspective for your life. This trip was food for my soul, it was the place I needed to mind dump, my great grandfather used to say if you are troubled in your spirit you need to cross water. Well crossing water helped my soul, I returned with a new joy. I returned and for the next few weeks I stayed in vacation mode, no matter what task I had to accomplish I did them at my own pace, I no longer want to wait to fly to another country to take vacation. Vacation could be staying in bed and taking a mental health day or getting together with my favorite cousins and laughing. This summer we spent so many more afternoons under our gazebo listening to music. We turned this summer into a vacation and vowed to live a life filled with more slow moments.
