The Beach in the Fall

 ....Amidst anniversaries and trauma-versaries.
If I would have been planning for the date that was the wisest I would not have picked

my daughter-in-law's birthday

their wedding anniversary

and Shekinah's adoption day.

But that was the weekend that worked with church schedules

availability schedules

and I hoped for a favorable weather forecast.

We filled the van to the gills.

At least we were able to share the food prep with "the married children"

That sounds like something my mom would say...ah well

I need to face up to the fact, that I have two married children and two grandchildren.

And a lot of gray hair.

We were going to the BEACH! and going to eat seafood!

We rented two floors of the house we had last year.

The water was warmer than the air on Saturday.

My hoped for weather didn't happen, it was gray and overcast.

BUT we didn't need sunscreen and we didn't need our winter coats.

Sunglasses weren't necessary either.

Most of us got wetter than we planned.

I realized I don't often get a chance to have a photo like this one.

So was it wise to have a family vacation on trauma-versary time?

What is this trauma thing anyway. Well, according to research formal and informal, our bodies/brains/hearts...whatever you want to call that place you keep memories can remember things that you can't really put into words. Why does the smell of fresh bread bring back warm happy feelings (other than you like to eat bread)? Why does a certain sound make you flinch before you even have time to register the source? A smell brings back a flood of memories?

Some evenings I've walked outside and I smelled China...

Well imagine that those smells, sounds, and sensations bring back bad memories?

For a lot of kids the anniversary of meeting new people who would be their parents is not a great time of the year. While my memories are of anticipation, theirs are filled with loss.

A lot of times they can't put into words what they are feeling and when children have those sensations, you know what they do...yeah, act out, cry about crazy things and generally can feel bad and out of the ordinary for this particular child.

What helps me the most is to prepare my mind for it and hopefully my schedule. (No I don't always remember- like this past weekend) And just be a bit more available and alert for when the wheels are about to fly off my wagon.

So was the beach trip a success? Yes. I would say that any of the "stuff" we saw after we came home was normal "post-vacation" syndrome. My idea is to layer good memories over

the difficult ones and hopefully they don't have as much pull.