Interlude

Tomorrow, after a choppy, restless week, I will pack both girls and way too much stuff into the car and drive to my favorite place in the world for almost four whole days. The drive itself will be long. Check your watch: I will be tired. I will need to stop, often, for coffee, and each time I stop I will have to unload two car seats, take all of us to the bathroom, fend off candy requests, and pray that nobody's carsick.

But when I get to where I'm going, a ferry dock in a little coastal town, onto the ferry itself, and off the ferry into another, more bustling little coastal town, I will be on an island that has never once failed to have a restorative effect on me, a place that is in every sense of the word, a haven.

It will, I hope, remind me that at every stage in life it is important to step away sometimes, quite literally to take a step away--over a body of water is nice, for me, but not required--in order to come back with renewed clarity. I am looking forward: to the people I will see, the spray on my face from the ferry deck, Lily at the water's edge selecting stones, the table I know Annika will practice walking around, lying in the grass with my hands under my head just looking up at the sky.

And this is strange, and unexpected; such is life. I am looking forward to coming home, stepping back in, too.