Saturday, March 10, 2012

Orange tee shirt and khaki shorts


It's good to be home. We enjoyed Southwest Florida. We fit in seamlessly. Most winter residents, however, know the tug we call where we live.

It has a pull that makes us willing enough, when the time signifies, to locate our air tickets or fill the gas tanks and head north toward home in sync with the dance of spring.

It's a great warm Saturday in Minnesota as we settle in. It's going for sixty which is a temperature record for this date. Cardinals are calling. It's happiness to be hearing our birds again.

March winds and the morning sun rising through the adjacent woods have given their authority to the early season as we get back to the business of being home.

We're glad to connect with the things that make our household tick. We dive into work which feels more authentic when resumed in your usual computer work spot.

Easing into favorite chairs at the end of the day is heavenly. Everything seems right and comfortable because it is. One says that of home.

My little joy is putting on something different from the vacation clothes which grew perhaps not tedious but way too familiar as one reached for the same few tops or an even smaller assortment of shorts.

I don't miss the beachwear as much as I thought. At ease in the unlayered uncomplicatedness of coastal Florida dressing my hunch was that it'd feel goofy to be back in regular clothing.

The flip flops unpacked and put away proved that idea faulty. We're back in sweaters and jeans as if never away.

When Al and I eventually choose to wear the Florida clothes (washed, folded and along with the flip flops stowed out of sight) they'll likely be hailed as old friends.

An effort was made to iron out the wrinkles, mend the rips and remove the food stains as we unpacked and laundered the contents of the emptied luggage. You can't be neat on vacation is what we learned and a hint for how to pack in the future.

The clothes we chose to take along turned out to be vacation companions of a sort. Our time in them is the story of our winter in Florida.

It's not just an orange tee shirt or pair of khaki shorts or the flip flops that left their prints in the sand. It's the association with each piece that we will recall as perhaps we don't notice the wear points on them at all.


Ro Giencke - March 10, 2012

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