Vacation

Last summer, G and I were scheduled to take a week's vacation in Galveston. Turned out that I got hired by Crystal Bridges and had to move that week, and so our trip was cancelled.

It was an eventful summer. There were a lot of changes, and I felt bad that so much had been imposed on Grayson without his consent. It turns out that the move was a good one for both of us, and G has no regrets about leaving Oklahoma, but I still felt bad about the loss of our special trip together, so I swore to myself that I would make it up to him.  I reserved our rooms for this summer back in the fall.

Honestly, I think the trip is as much for me as for him -- or more so.  I recognize in my boy signs that he is growing up, skirting adolescence... and I sense that our time together is growing short. Of course, I'll always be his Mom, and of course he'll be living with me for many years ahead. But my boy will not be a little boy much longer. In truth, he's changing already. I wanted to take a special vacation together - just us - while he still thinks I'm the cat's pajamas and will still hold my hand and sit in my lap.

Granted, he's a bit big to be in my lap. But he still climbs in there every day, just to be held and to give and receive love in the way only a mom and her boy can do.

So it was important that this be the summer we take that vacation. In September my boy will be twelve, teetering on the edge of teenagerhood. Already he is taller than my shoulder. Next summer, on the cusp of thirteen... who knows?

So I maxed out a credit card and emptied our bank account and we went. 22 hours together in the car. Six days in Galveston on the top floor of a B class hotel on the beach with a tiny little balcony and a nice pool. It was glorious.

I knew I had done the right thing when we finally arrived at the long bridge that crosses to Galveston Island. Grayson was as excited as a squirrel, squealing in anticipation and peering out the windows for his first glimpse of ocean. And then there it was:  the warm bathwaters of the mighty Gulf of Mexico, stretched out before us like a promise we had waited a whole year to fulfill.


He hardly let me get our luggage carried in before he was rummaging for his bathing suit and hustling me out the door, down the steps and across the road to the beach.  And that moment, when his pale white feet hit the sand and the warm waves hit him... my heart leapt and my eyes filled with tears. I wanted this so much for my boy and me.

We dived into the waves and played in the surf. We bobbed on the swells out past the breakers and tiptoed out... further... further.... further... to see how far we could go out into the ocean before we couldn't touch bottom.  Turns out it's a long way.  The jetties that punctuate the beachline every few hundred yards serve to gather up the silt and keep the shipping channels clear, so there's a long reach of shallow sandy bottom. We could go far enough out that, even with my toes still touching, I was not comfortable going any further. I'm not afraid of the sea, but I have a keen sensation that it could positively care less about me, and I should watch my Ps and Qs in its presence.

The waves were warm. Too warm, in truth.  This late in the season, the Gulf feels like a warm cup of tea. But it was wonderful to feel the mighty lift and  pull of the ocean again and to taste the salt water and look out over that never ending horizon. Blue on blue on blue until it meets the sky.

We hadn't seen the ocean in four years, when we spent a day at Cocoa Beach in Florida as part of a family DisneyWorld trip back shortly before his dad and I were divorced.

I won't claim that there weren't moments of frustration during this trip.  I developed a bad toothache on day two and had to find a dentist in Galveston to look at it (he found nothing wrong and suggested ibuprofen, but at least he didn't charge me for the xray). And 22 hours in a car is a lot for anyone. But overall it was a joy. A delight. We visited two aquariums, two butterfly pavilions and the super cool new paleontology exhibits at the Houston Natural History museum, where we both geeked out in a big way.  We ate pizza and chips and cotton candy. We bought souvenirs and had strangers take our picture and we went to bed some nights with sand in our hair.

We went to the beach almost every day.  Grayson found two crabs and we saw two jellyfish. We watched the brown pelicans diving for fish and watched fish leaping out of the water to escape something from below. We got lost and had to find creative ways of getting back on track, during which we were chased by four farm dogs and saw two deer, a coyote, two turtles, a donkey and a flock of chickens on the roadside.

We ran across a wonderful old derelict drive-in movie theatre somewhere in southeastern Oklahoma along the Indian Highway (Home of Big foot), that I tried to find again on the way back, but never could.  Grayson said it was okay because we'd seen it and we had the pictures in our minds. And we do.

I don't care what it cost, it was one of the best times of my life.  I so loved spending time with my son, just finding things to be amazed by and enjoying the novelty of everything. I have lots of pictures, and lots more pictures in my mind of this wonderful six days of true summer vacation with my favorite person in the whole, wide, world.