A different side to vacation

My husband, myself, and our two daughters are wrapping up our summer vacation.  We took a trip to North Carolina to visit relatives on my husband's side of the family, then we drove another few hours to the coast.  We spent three nights in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina.  This small, coastal town only has about 450 permanent residents. There are no chain restaurants, no amusement parks, and we learned on our first evening there that mini-golf is THE most popular nighttime activity on the island (and there is only one mini-golf course, so it is one of the only nighttime activities on the island).  I would recommend this place to anyone who is looking for a nice place to take their family on vacation.....unless you get bored easily.  If you and/or your family need a lot of activities to fill each minute of the day, go some place else.  I, however, can fill a week with time sitting on the beach, watching the waves and pelicans diving into them looking for fish, reading a book in a hammock, and drinking frozen concoctions that help me hang on (Jimmy Buffet reference).  What I have discovered is that the less I do on vacation with my body, the more my mind wanders.  As my butt sits close to the sand, my brain is doing the equivalent of an Ironman competition.  To the other tourists on the beach, I appear to be dozing off in my chair, but my mind is a flurry of ideas so frantic for fruition that I still cannot calm them when it is time to sleep at night.  While I lazily lie in that hammock and try to read a book, I am asking myself questions about every aspect of my life:  Why don't we move to a state closer to the ocean?  I wonder if my dad would have enjoyed the beach?  What are my daughters going to be like in 10 years?  How did I gain back 20 of the 30 pounds I lost last year?  What do people see when they look at me sitting on the beach?  Am I ever going to finish one of the books I have been trying to write for the past five years?  Should I stop dying my hair and let it go gray?

You would think a vacation would put you at ease.  Do not get me wrong; this has been a much needed get-a-way for all of us.  We have all had a great time, and the beach does melt away stress better than any method I know.  But, how do I get my mind to be able to take a vacation?  How do I get that beachy feel to permeate the layers of hair, scalp, and skull to allow the subconscious to feel at peace?  I tried pouring sand in my ears, but all that did was cause a nasty infection.  I tried snorting sea water, but that just made me cough and choke and sneeze out salty boogers.  I even allowed a sea gull to make a nest in my hair...lets just say that did not give the desired results.  When we say a person has their toes in the sand, we instantly imagine they are relaxed.  When we say a person has their head in the sand, we see them as hiding from reality.  All I want is to be relaxed in my reality, so what do I bury to get that?

Peace does not happen when everything just fixes itself.  Peace is not a result of having everything you want.  To achieve peace, a lot of time there first is a war.  An objective must be made, and peace comes in the accomplishments in reaching that goal.  Instead of asking all the questions, maybe the time has come when I start answering them.  Maybe we all need to take one of the questions that keep us up at night and make it our goal to answer it.  Put it to rest.  Mark it off the list.  Maybe all the answered questions will start to build like grains of sand in your mind.  Maybe the goals that are reached will form an oceanside hammock that swings in the breeze.  And, maybe the accomplishments we make will blow across our skin and make us smile and smell the air.  Just maybe.