Post Vacation Blues (PVB)

Vacation is over. I’m not sitting on my porch in Wellfleet, sipping wine and slurping back some oysters. My skin is not salty from the ocean, but sticky from Dean’s PBJ. Grace is being a sassy pants, and had an epic tantrum last night; balled fists,  screaming bloody murder from her bedroom. Dean won’t settle down, and the ocean air seems to have made the brute stronger. In the day and a half since we’ve been home, my voice has gone hoarse from yelling, and I feel like I’m losing the battle. The only one in the house that is truly happy to be home is the dog, and she didn’t go on vacation with us.

Any good vacation worth its salt (see what I did there?) has the potential to induce the Post Vacation Blues, and this one is no different.

Take the directions with you.
Take the directions with you.

The thing that I like about Wellfleet is that everything slows down. There are lots of unpaved roads that force you to drive slowly. The best way to get to the secret pond is to walk, following the path through the woods. Just remember to pick it up on the other side after you cross under the power lines, and let the rest of your crew know where to meet you, before you lose your phone signal.

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Picking Scabs

Within a few hours of submitting my story about the Boblo Boat, I had booked a flight to Detroit, where the SS Columbia documentary was being filmed. It was Tuesday, and they had selected my story and scheduled the interview for coming Saturday. Everything fell into place so seamlessly, I couldn’t help but think it was all supposed to happen.

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Detroit at Night

I had a day to get ready; look through old letters, dig out the stuffed bunny Mike won me, make arrangements for the kids while I was gone, grocery shop, laundry, keep stuffed bunny away from the dog, and pack for a 5 day trip. I flew through my chores, and finally ready to go, collapsed into bed with my laptop the night before my flight. At which point, my brain started to kick into high gear.

I read my blog. I re-read it. I thought about Mike’s family, whom I hadn’t spoken to in years. At some point, towards the end of my college career, we had parted ways. It felt as though I would always be a reminder of where their son would be in life had he lived, and it was keeping me from moving on with my life. Now that I’m a parent, I can’t fathom losing a child. I would imagine it is something that they (try not to) think about every day. I was just the girlfriend, and it was easy enough to move on with my life once I made the decision to.

But what if they came across this documentary at some point? They would want to know, wouldn’t they? They should know, I thought. I began to super-sleuth.

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