Since our yard times are getting more and more dialed in with each passing year, our enjoyable time allotment for our last few days has grown to allow for a proper festive exit. This year we hustled to button Chickadee up while the girls were entertained with new friends on walks, in pools, exploring mangroves, and rolling in the waves. We adults were also able to spend time with new friends, and had the chance to relax just the littlest bit in an effort to stem the tide of anxiety pouring out of every news outlet.
As a very worthy assist this time around, we stumbled onto/into a rental cottage that made me ache to leave behind this morning. Built in the 50s or 60s and funky with a very Hereshoff feel, its high-glossed Abaco pine on open studs was only one piece of the appeal. We fell asleep listening to the waves crash ‘at our feet’, and I got to sit amidst the casuarinas on the dune deck this morning to watch the sunrise. To really seal the deal, it came with a ‘pet’, and after bonding over our shared love of Tostitos and Doritos, he was christened Wild Bobby and was swiftly added to our menagerie of loved ones.
What a whirlwind to end with. While I can say with complete honesty that a two week quarantine upon arrival home is the greatest gift I can imagine (Heck! Let’s make it three, and let’s enforce it every year!), everything else is just so overwhelming. Data points upon data points, news of dwindling grocery supplies, editorialized shaming for just about every activity mentioned (including travel, so let us have it, world!), the sheer quantity of all of it coming at us from every direction. That cottage on the beach never felt such adoration.
We’re on the ferry to Marsh Harbour now, having just started our northward climb into the unknown. What was brilliantly pointed out to me by Ruach yesterday are the parts we DO know: cruising has prepared us so well for what so many seem to already be struggling with. Spending confined, extended time with your kids? Check. Homeschooling? Check. Making healthy meals together with limited resources? Check. I will say, the toilet paper was never an issue on the boat, so that might be our challenge? Hmm. Still kind of doubt it.
So. A goodbye to our sweet Chickadee:
Thank you for another joyful season, and enjoy your rest. Stay strong for hurricane season, old girl; we know you’re tough, but no more storm ‘kisses’ if you can help it. (A non-profit shop on Hope Town had things stamped “Kissed by Dorian”, to which we chuckled that our poor boat had been not kissed, but instead kicked in the face..)
Once again you gave us a winter of invaluable time with our girls, new adventures, comfortable routines and restorative time away. We miss you dearly and will use the memories and the countdown to 2021 to get us through our most chaotic moments.
Ever grateful,
SALVio
