Out and Back: Expectations.

I'm glad we went. Of course I am. It's the place that I spent 17 summers of my life. In childhood years, I grew up there. All of it I remember so clearly and just as most profound things are, this trip was draped in fun, grateful moments and clouded by sad realizations.

Having my family there felt very full circle. All of the memories I have from being a child in that place, I got to witness with my own children. Wrapping them in towels on the deck, buckling their life jackets, playing in the sand, watching them drive the boat, reading comic books at breakfast, walking to get ice cream, looking out the big bay window, eating at the picnic table, swinging in the hammock. At times I felt like I was spending the entire vacation re-absorbing the place that holds so much family history for us, all the while dealing with the immediacy of impatient toddlers. Because they have no idea. They don't know what it's like to say good-bye to a place you love, to try and make sense of the passing of time, to attempt to balance the insistent and very loud present with the ever distancing past.

The place I thought I was taking my kids to, the place I grew up in, isn't really there anymore. Physically and symbolically, it's changing. Aging. It doesn't logistically "fit" the life I have now and I guess that realization surprised me. And I know I'll be ok with that at some point, but right now, it's pretty sad. Those who know me well right now know that I'm in the process of giving myself breaks, of not putting too much pressure or permanence on how I'm feeling. For this trip, I'm letting myself hang on to the memories we made while mourning the changes of the place I knew so well that my own children will not.

So I took lots of pictures.