Waves

Sunday night

I was talking with my former boss, Maurice, and told him that I was recently walking near a traffic circle where he and his wife had picked me up one time. I had needed a break and wanted to get away for a little while, so I had stopped by a hotel which was only a couple of blocks away. The front of the building faced the road not far from the roundabout, but the back entrance opened out onto the beach, and offered a wonderful view of the ocean. I walked down the left side of the building, and then took a right, where I found several of the hotel guests waiting patiently on a large, wide concrete stairway. The interesting thing about the stairway was that it was equipped with a special metal archway which rose up above our heads, and leaned out a few feet in the direction of the water. Somehow, the archway could sense the size of the waves in the distance, and with a glance, vacationers could tell whether or not it was safe to venture out into the water. Shortly after I arrived, I could tell that there were rough seas out there; the archway glowed red, and started blinking the numbers 1500; that meant that there was a 1,500 foot tall wave breaking out there. Better stay on the porch till things calm down.

*****

If there really was a 1,500 ft. wave heading our way, there wouldn't be a porch for very long, or a hotel, for that matter.

Again, I'm dreaming of the beach. My brother Jimmie and sister-in-law, Dawn, recently invited my wife and me to join them for a family vacation at the beach this summner, not far from a beach house that will be rented by my aunt and loads of cousins. That would be nice, but the fact is that my wife and I haven't had a week-long vacation away on our own since we went to Ireland, and that was in the fall of 2004. (A lot of things have happened since then; job changes, etc.) We are getting away by ourselves to Acadia National Park in Maine in late July. I hate to disappoint anyone, and sometimes wish I could be in two places at once, but I hope that everyone understands that when we travel home for Christmas, while it's nice to see family and friends, we end up staying for several days in a house filled with 10 people, we spend lots of time driving back and forth to see everyone, then we take 11 hours to drive home and go back to work. It's exhausting. This time we'll be staying at an inn with a balcony overlooking the harbor. We'll be going out to eat, walking the beach, hitting antique stores and book shops, etc. I do sincerely hope that we can do the beach thing with our families at another time.

And I owe Maurice and his wife a call. They contacted us a month ago about taking a walk around a local lake, and I've been so busy that I haven't taken them up on it. I suppose that I feel guilty about the Maurice thing and the beach thing with Jimmie and Dawn, so I combined them in this dream.