missives from the littoral
Back from our yearly week-long beach trip. I say yearly–this year makes two in a row… Went to Ocean Isle Beach, a dozen or so miles from the SC border and Myrtle Beach (the latter aptly nicknamed “the armpit of civilization” by my lovely wife). The beach was wonderful, relaxing, with clear skies and enough wind for the kites we flew almost every evening near the end of the week. I purchased one of those dual-handle fancy “stunt kites” on Friday and had a good time flying that, doing loops and dives and terrorizing stray pelicans.
What’s more, Luke had a fantastic time, miles beyond his experience last year. He splashed about in the water, helped build sand castles and got excited over sea shells and walks to the pier. He and I went wave jumping a couple of times and he was loath to return to the sand. He didn’t even have a death grip on me the whole time, but relaxed, moved with the waves and laughed uproariously when daddy would spit out some seawater or we would jump over a particularly big wave.
He is much more adventurous now with his words, and is mispronouncing them in cute ways. “Domino” becomes “donimo,” “magnifying glass” turns into “magsdifying glass” and he remembers our trip two months ago to Discovery Place in Charlotte as our trip to “Excovery Place.”
Diane’s parents and my parents vacationed with us in the beach house, and it was good to spend some time with my mom and dad. With my dad, it’s always good to discuss work, being able to take advantage of the common understanding of that framework and responsibility. He can be sparing with his words at times, but I trust his intentions implicitly and he is an encourager at heart, so his words of motivation have added weight, nevermind the fact they’re coming from my dad. And my mom and I always talk about anything and everything. She brought a stack of literature to the beach, much of which Diane and I plowed through: the latest Newsweek and Weekly Standard were quickly dispatched, along with a neat little book called Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar. I almost finished, at long last, Sophie’s World and inspired by recent “encounter” with Flannery O’Connor, I started Mystery and Manners.