Y’all.
It’s been six years since An Island Mom began. Six years!
An Island Mom’s origins can be traced back to an afternoon many years ago, when I was walking in the ocean in a dress, as I’m wont to do, in search of a quest. Suddenly, the waves began to speak. “Woman, you must start a blog,†they bellowed at me, while those nearby turned to stare and wonder at both a talking ocean and its profundity.
Um, not exactly.
Actually, I fell asleep on the beach one afternoon, and I had a dream. In it, the sea god Triton rose up from the Atlantic, raised his trident high in the air, and blew into his conch, stilling the waves. Then he spoke, saying that I was the woman of the blog prophecy from of old, the one that would rise up from the Midwest and go south and east to the sea, the one that would create the blog An Island Mom, which would save the people from some vague, lurking evil.
Well, it wasn’t really quite like that.
In truth, it began with people’s questions about our story, with long talks and longer walks, with a desire for a place to do more writing, and yes, with a decision matrix not unlike the one LCB created that led us from the city to the islands.
In the beginning, all three kids could fit on one board,
puddles worked as pools,
no one cared that Mom had a camera,
and every conquered wave was worthy of celebration. Â
Along the way there have been confessions, weather talks, church-hopping, our pre-island story, our off-island ventures by van and by plane, and even etymology.
We lived and I wrote and we moved from one day to the next, and now here we are, six years later.
And on a good day now, with a little effort, all three kids can still fit on one jumbo tube, and we can look, with only a bit of squinting, toward the next six years.
Thanks so much for being a part of the first six, y’all. It has been an honor.