That’s a Wrap.

Whelp, here we are. The northern home. Snow on the ground, temps painfully below freezing, kids scattered around the house on reunion play dates, full dockets to plan for our first Monday mornings back, and a completely different set of routines and guiding forces. I even just woke from a dream about painting our stovepipe, for Pete’s sake. ‘Real’ life sure did crash back pretty quickly.

Once more, the girls, who no doubt adore their Chickadee time, have mentally and satisfyingly assimilated seamlessly, with only thoughts of seeing friends, their favorite parts of school ahead and playing in the yard and in our incredible surrounding spaces here on MDI dictating their new time.

Andy and I… less so. It’s hard to let go of something so special, especially when that special is accompanied by truly pleasant forecasting not seemingly aimed at harming you (forget the hurricanes, people, I’m simply talking about 78 degrees and a level of humidity that doesn’t suck your airways to a crisp). Aside from the fact that we drove out of New England in January and traces of head colds were instantly forgotten only to rear their heads again upon crossing the state line again, it’s hard to give ourselves up to our world here, to leave our ‘Cocoon of Four’. I have always loathed when parents of older children use the phrase “just wait, you’ll see” when referring to an ‘age-tied’ experience that they’re having with their child (who in the heck says my experience will follow theirs?!), but man, one day, Lily and Violet will see. They’ll know what we mean, and why we’re a bit sulky for now. We are excited to see family and friends, and we love our jobs and our life here, so we know that this too shall pass. For now though, our thoughts are still with the boat, and how she’s doing without little toes dancing on the bow and one particular monkey swinging from her davits. She also has the ability to boast that we can put dishes away without moving our feet, a fact we were painfully reacquainted with when we got home and had to schlep those plates around. (Blessedly our house isn’t that much bigger than our boat, so the ‘schlep’ was hyperbolic, indeed.) That is to say that our sweet Chickadee provides benefits to our lives that only increase as time goes on; we’re ever so grateful.

See you next year, old girl.