It Was Only One Moment

So it was only one moment... really one day.

Alright, it was a week.

A whole glorious week... with no Internet.  

No television.  

No phone.  

No air conditioning.

This is where we were.

And in the picture above is a little boy.  

See how small he is against the walls of rolling surf?

See how small he looks against an expanse of stripes of color?

This boy is learning how to balance his intense desire for electronic gaming magic with his parents' desire for him to "go outside and play".  

This is him, too.

He's a wonderful child.  

He's the youngest of our gang... the baby... and the only boy.

He is his father's son, and his mother's whole heart, 

and my responsibility to look after for a while.

So it was really only a moment of a different kind of vacation.

He claims to have hated it.  He claims he was bored.  He says it was terrible because there was no television... no Internet... no air conditioning...  No games, no boardwalk, no people, no shops, no restaurants, no arcades, no ice cream, no streets, no mini golf.

He says it was the worst vacation ever and he never wants to GO THERE EVER AGAIN!!!

But I remember things a little differently.

I remember the one that didn't get away.

And I remember the joy shared with his father.

I remember my two favorite guys fishing against a backdrop of a perfectly straight horizon line.

The moments of the sea fading into the sky...

...and a little boy who said, "Why are there so many stars here?  Why don't we have all these stars at home?  This. Is. Magical."

And I want him to remember that, too.

I also want him to remember the ribbons of waving grasses...

and the burn of the hot sun

and squeezing every last drop out of every last second of every last minute...

of daylight.

**********************************************

 Fourteen short and long sleeved men's dress shirts.

Two boy's long sleeved dress shirts.

Three hand dyed fat quarters.

One errant scrap.