Today has been absolutely grueling and gut-wrenching. I got up at 4:15 AM to journey north, leaving behind my husband of 367 days and the carefree anonymity of our tropical paradise. Nine hours previous, we had sailed into the sunset, the annual tradition on our last night in the Keys. And as the masts of the Schooner Western Union turned starboard, from the point where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Atlantic Ocean, the wind carried us back towards the lights of Mallory Square. And I wept. Quietly. Standing at the ships' rail. Wrapped in the arms of the most amazing man I have ever known.
I wept because we were leaving and I wept because I wanted to be back home, with my children, in that instant. I wept for the beauty of a town built on the legacy of pirates and shipwrecks and outcasts, whose vision is now to be "One Human Family." I wept for the Hemingway "Papa" I had met at Sloppy Joe's on Thursday, who traveled from Norway to "experience Key West." When I saw him again on Friday, his wife Molfrid conveyed to us that their city, Oslo, had been terrorized by a bombing, while a mass of teenaged campers had been slaughtered on an island nearby.
But I also wept for the laughter and the revelry and the memories of so many friends over the years who have journeyed with us to drink, swim, walk miles and miles, and to capture some of our most incredible days (and nights) on film. Conch fritters at Alabama Jacks and sunset swims in the Gulf at Key Largo. Rumrunners with our bartender, Bonnie, and cheese omelets at the Schooner Wharf Bar. Kino sandals and Margaritaville t-shirts. Fast Buck Freddies and B.O's Fish Wagon. The Roosters at Blue Heaven and the Drag Queens at the Bourbon Street Bar.
Memories that soak into your pores with the searing sun and buoy you through long, frigid winters. Carefree adventures where you flirt with the invincible feeling of the wind in your hair and your whole life stretched out ahead of you. Laughter to tears, mixed with the bittersweet knowlege that the price of escape will be waiting to be paid in the morning light.
Eleven hours and many miles later I arrived at our North Carolina house, sitting tidy and hollow in a steady afternoon rain. It wasn't just leaving my husband that shattered my heart and left me queasy, although that alone would certainly be enough. It was the reality that most of my days are spent either being away from him or being away from my kids; it is a rare occasion when we are all four together in the same locale for extended periods of time. But that is the life we lead and the love we have chosen. The same life that gives us two homes, an abundance of family, friends from both our lifetimes and more adventures than I can count. Truly, we are blessed beyond measure.
So, tomorrow morning I will wake up in my own bed in a quiet house and I will return to a desk stacked high with work left undone. By 2:30 PM, Jackson and Braeden will be home from school and the chaos of our "normal" lives will resume. And for that I am grateful down to my soul. Because the reality of my life is infinitely more satisfying than my adventurous escapades. Besides, I can always drink Rumrunners and watch the sunset, no matter where I am!
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