On to Saint Vincent

 

My younger daughter is back to on-campus learning.  This will take a bit of unlearning.  Friday morning routines for me mean calls in the wee-hours and then a calmness welcoming the dawn and the freedom from obligation that comes with the end of the business day in China and the beginning of Friday here in New York.  This morning though, I just returned to bed after the last of these calls, somewhere around five.  Two hours later I heard someone clumping around and jumped up.  “What are you doing up so late?” I called, downstairs to the laundry room at what I expected was my older one.  “Um, getting ready for school . . .”  Ah yes. 

Our old routine, last fall was a fine one.  I grumbled in the early days, about ‘chauffeuring’ her school, where there was a school bus at-the-ready.  Eventually though I came to cherish the time as a daily check-in, she could play tunes, I could play tunes.  If you look back at the entries from those dates, you’ll see we tried to do a daily progression through Korean history.  Today she caught me off guard and threw on Abbey Road and it was all I could do not to jump up and down and air-bass along with “Come Together.”  Listening to the timeless harmonies on “Because” was celestial, driving across the Mid-Hudson Bridge. 

 

And on the way home I called my best buddy over there in Beijing.  It was his eight in the evening and it rang but no one picked up.  He’d a been a fine one to talk Beatles with.  Left to myself for the ride home I soon had side three of the “White Album” on as loud as the car would go, marveling at Ringo’s muscular drumming on “Birthday” and crying uncontrollably, as if on-queue when I tried to sing along with “Cry Baby Cry.”  Purified and exhausted I felt, finally driving back down our drive.

 

They little ones will have their first vaccine shots tomorrow.  We’ll get our second next week.  Dare I begin to think about that which has otherwise remained unthinkable:  a vacation?  Just a glance at that rarified light, on the drive over I’d suggested that we might perhaps consider the French-speaking island of Martinique and my daughter had asked, why don’t we take a boat around, (that’s a fine idea), and I threw open the door, the moment I got home.  I’ve a new colleague-cum chum in Spain who hails from Martinique.  He had quickly shared with me photos of boats one could rent for $1500 per week that looked remarkable.  The distance from Martinque to Saint Lucia is only twenty miles and then on to St. Vincent yet again another twenty.  “How long does it take to sail such a distance?” I asked my friend.   Well you could travel from island to island and in many cases country to country in a matter of hours, there in the Eastern Caribbean.  I began imagining a trip off-season, perhaps August time frame and then I then I remembered things like Hurricanes.  Still, we could never have considered the Caribbean sitting in Beijing.  Lot’s of places to consider with the aperture altered. 

Friday, 04/16/21