It's hard to believe it's been a month since I last took a dip on St. Sunshine. Spring sprang itself with activity and mayhem, as I chased goals, traveled North and abided necessary pauses. Now summer sits just before us, looming over a clementine colored sunrise. Carnival has passed and brought the sticky heat, summer rain, humid stillness, frisky flies, and Saharan dust. It's time to close the doors and windows (oh no!) to keep the bugs out and turn the air conditioners on.
The Caribbean summer has the feels of the northeast winter, in the sense of hibernating against the elements and divining the magic from what Mother Nature throws your way. Instead of snow storms, we have rain storms that turn dry, silent rivers into mad waterfalls and mudslides, making the blue water in Magan's Bay brown. Instead of icicles and glazed branches, we have the wild red blooms of the flamboyant tree that dot the green hills with a passionate fire. Instead of frigid winds and low temperatures, we watch the weather off the coast of Africa and prepare for impending hurricanes and tropical storms (the official start date of hurricane season is June 1).
Needless to say, the turn over from our warm to hot season brings changes in the day to day, and it brings the kids home! Hugh arrived this past weekend and stays for a couple weeks. The rhythms Dave and I are used to shift with our oldest in the house. The opportunity to do or make for him, just because, reminds us of days gone by. I get to stock the fridge with food and his favorite orzo salad. Dave makes a cheese plate before dinner. We watch shows and movies Hugh wants to see, trying to figure out how to fit 3 on our rental couch with too many pillows and cushions to fall between.
With Hugh home, there is a different gravity in the house. To think that Hugh turns 20 next week and our parenting life began over twenty years ago, pregnancy included, and here we are with a man child who has his own credit card, gets internships without telling us, goes to clubs in LA on school nights, hangs out with the kids of renown Hollywood directors and, yet, doesn't know how to pack a bag or bags for an entire summer. His text of shock that bag fee was $200 with one mammoth overweight 100 lbs bag! ... We will teach him how to pack from now on - and we're taking the body bag with wheels away from him.
I'm grateful to witness the small uh-oh's and oh well's and see the things we still have to teach him. I mean, he's been traveling across the country, back and forth between LA and STT, for the last two years, moving himself into and out of apartments without his parents. It's endearing and heart breaking, at times, to think about the things Hugh is doing on his own. And to have an "only child experience" for a few weeks lets us get a full on view of how he's navigating the world, and where the world is navigating him.
Harry has already had his parents' complete attention when his older siblings were away at school. I imagine Elsa will have her time as an "only child", though it will be trickier as the middle child to not overlap with her brothers' schedule in some way. Even so, these moments of singularity are ones that inform me most of their vulnerability and individuality. When it is/was all three kids together at one time, the hierarchy kicks in, the roles are established, the family system works in its predictable patterns to keep homeostasis. To have one at a time makes for more attention, to offer and receive, to nurture and let go. Less chaos, more being, more subtle observing.
In the unfolding of launched children parenting, where open arms and hopes for happy returns always exist, there is forever the goal to keep safe, to provide, to allow and watch with an open heart. I am consistently challenged and rewarded with the growing independence of our children. I am also realizing that the ebb and flow of sending off and receiving my children will never stop. But even in the knowing of what's coming, like the warmer temperatures of the aqua blue sea of summer and the winter winds of December and January, the breath taking moments of nature and nurturing never stop.
To all the mamas (& papas) out there, may you know love up close and from long distances.
Always shining,
St. Sunshine
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