After traveling all day from Charleston (I truly believe I could have driven home in this elapsed time), I am home. I am drained, numb, slow, and out of step with the cadence around me. The rapid-fire whiz of cars on I-75 as I drive my car home from the airport is a stressful encounter despite it being such a familiar route. Once across the threshold, I drop my suitcase and the absolute first order of business is a ridiculously long, luxurious shower using copious amounts of hot-as-I can-tolerate-it water. The house - quiet, tidy and orderly with a place and space for each treasured item - seems absolutely enormous as it is at least 10x the living space of our boat. How DID I live in such a small space for nearly 3 months?

Off to dinner at Mom & Dad's, featuring all of my favorite foods (aren't moms amazing!). But I am shocked at how animated, noisy and raucous what has always been our typical family banter seems to me today through my sea-slowed ears. Land life feels so fast and so loud, so large and so vacuous. When it is finally time to crash for the night, instead of having to hop up and literally climb into a berth, I just have to sit, twist and plop down...but the cozy feel of my boat bunk is missing; I feel so exposed. Accustomed as I am to the boat's Tempurpedic topper, the bed here just feels too firm and formal and empty. And where is that gentle rocking motion to lull me to sleep?

Make no mistake, I am just observing not complaining, for the adjustment back to the world of creature comforts is immediate, automatic, and effortless - crisp dry sheets, the pleasing white-noise purr of air-conditioning, both temperature and humidity regulation, ahhhhhhhhhhh, I am in climate-controlled heaven. Yes, while it rains nonstop for the first 36 hours I am home (including 6 straight hours of lightning and thunder), in the safe refuge of what now feels like my massive (and gratefully leak-free) home, I barely notice. I could get used to this. I do get used to this - instantaneously. I also have no trouble getting used to stepping right out my very own front door, whenever I so desire - no dinghy required, thank you very much - to go for a walk or a stroll or a ride, all at my very own whim and discretion. What ease, what freedom, what contentment.

As the week progresses, drained as I still feel, I am glad to be home alone with few demands on me. In my not-ready-for-prime-time stupor, I find myself moving in slow motion as I tend to appointments for hair and skin and nails trying to reverse 73 days in the elements (no small feat at age 54). Everything else can wait - after all, it already has for over 10 weeks. Perhaps the true reward in taking such a significant break from the routine that we then call life is to afford us the distance to reevaluate it. I now get to ask -What do I want to restart? What have I, and now can I, live without? And how do I choose? In my somewhat dazed state it is making perfect sense to approach it scientifically, a controlled experiment, kind of like allergy shots - re-introducing one thing at a time and discerning how my now stripped down body, mind and spirit respond to each stimulus. What reaction do I get? Does it still fit into my life? And, if so, at what level?

So while I would love to sit here and write a tight essay on "What I got out of my Summer Vacation", I am not there yet. Indeed, after the year of change we have experienced as a family, I do not think any of us is there yet. Now on land and back in the safe haven of our home, our adventures behind us for the moment, it seems totally appropriate to take this occasion to sort through what works in our new retired (land & sea) life and what doesn't...and that may take some time. I used to balk at that corny bumper sticker, you know the one - "Easy Does It" - but I am right there with them. I find it so refreshing (and such a departure from who I have always felt I needed to be) to not have to have all of the answers but rather to be open to funneling my energy into being present to the story unfolding right before me.....perhaps, in the end, this is precisely what I got from my summer vacation.