We woke up yesterday morning to find ourselves still without air conditioning or internet. Inconveniently, our A/C unit went belly up right before Memorial Day weekend, and then Sunday morning, our internet went down. We were working on fixing the problem, of course, but some solutions come faster than others, particularly when it’s a holiday weekend on a small island.
Fortunately, our middle child, the originator of most fun family ideas and basically The One Sent To Save The Island Family From Boring Ourselves To Death, had already concocted a plan. To finish off our Memorial Day Weekend, he declared (with him it’s usually a declaration) that we should walk the beach into town and have breakfast. It was a great idea, but not without its challenges. The main challenge was the fact that town is almost three miles away, and in case you missed it, we have three small people in our family. The oldest one despises all forms of exertion that don’t involve water or team sports. The youngest is, well, four.
So the challenge in this situation was to try to keep both the oldest and youngest from giving up halfway there and leaving us stuck a mile or more from either our house or our car, which we had decided to park in town so that we could drive home after breakfast. And even with the adults, sometimes the spirit is willing but the body quickly gets weak.
Island Dad and I made it significantly harder on ourselves by staying up late the evening before watching a movie I now have antagonistic feelings toward, because it was so not worth the 97 minutes of my life that are now gone forever. So, we slept in much later than we usually do, which meant that by the time we took off the next morning, it was almost mid-morning instead of at sunrise like we originally intended. This was going to make the walk more difficult, because by this point in the day, the heat was full-on.
We prepared ourselves prior to the walk by eating what we called “first breakfast†in the spirit of Lord of the Rings. We also made sure we were properly hydrated, dressed, SPF50ed, and pottied.
Things went wonderfully well for the first 11.2 seconds of the trip. Then, just like Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird is drawn to the Radley place “as the moon draws water,†so my eldest was drawn to the ocean, despite our warnings not to get totally soaked on this journey. He promptly and thoughtlessly baptized himself in the Atlantic, and then spent the next 20 minutes letting us know via extremely effective nonverbal communication just how uncomfortable he was because of the way his clothes were rubbing against his skin while he walked. My younger son, on the other hand, went to great lengths to get as far into the water as possible without getting his clothes wet.
Eventually, my older son’s mood improved, and the next part of our walk was spent discussing tides and the changes we observed in the shore as we walked. We were having fun, but it was extremely hot. Briefly, we paused to rest and dip our feet in a small pool of water by the shore, and the small people commented on the architectural details of some of the houses while I took their picture.
As you can see, the middle child is all about peace these days. Not peace the concept, of course. He’s still relatively sketchy on what that is. He’s much more about peace as a hand gesture. We’re not really sure why, but we put up with it, thankful that he chose one of the more friendly gestures as his new signature statement, especially since he uses it so indiscriminately, like at church, at the school spring concert, in the check-out line at the grocery store, and so forth.
As we resumed our walk, my daughter naturally decided that she was tired of walking. So I carried her on my back for a while, and then my husband took a turn holding her.
Then, as she began to sense that we were nearing our destination, she took off running, renewed with energy. I, on the other hand, was ready to flop down on the sand and not get up again until November.
Once in town, we selected one of the least pretentious restaurants on the island for our second breakfast. While a champagne brunch would have been appealing on another occasion, this was not one of those moments. I can only imagine what I looked like walking into that restaurant, t-shirt stuck to my back, hair matted to my face, mascara probably streaked down the sides of my cheeks. I didn’t even want to know, and thankfully squeezed into a corner booth that was open at the restaurant.
Ultimately though, it was a great experience outside of the heat factor, and I think all of us are glad we did it. However, next time, and I’m sure there will be a next time, we’re starting three hours earlier. Or, we’ll do it in the dead of winter, which here will likely mean shockingly frigid temperatures that hover around 60.
Loved the commentary. When you first mentioned your son’s idea of walking to town, I had visions of all of the things that you possibly happen to us with littles in tow. Your oldest sounds like my second son–he’d enjoy the adventure for about the first 12.2 seconds, then complain about how hot and tired he was the rest of the time. 😉 Nice to know that we aren’t the only family that the “unplanned” happens to. On another note, the walk to breakfast sounds like a lovely idea!