Easing into the Week

The first week back from a vacation needs to be eased-into, and this is my easing-in week.  I'm still on island time, and returning to reality is a challenge. 

Last week was lovely.  I walked along the beach for three nights in a row under a luminously full moon which lit the water and made me weepy, lazed in a hammock after a glass of wine in the evening, took my children to the beach one night and ran wild and dancing together along the deserted shore, and swam in the ocean.  I love ducking under a wave as it comes crashing down on me.  Every time I go to the beach I tell myself that I will not swim in the ocean, as I imagine all the perils that await me (rip currents! jellyfish! sharks! sting rays!).  Every time I cannot resist the siren song of the sea.  I awaken from the comfortable slumber of my careful, risk-averse life and find myself doing the backstroke in the Atlantic.  It never fails. (As it turns out, my husband *did* see two large sting rays, but all's well that ends well, as Ma Ingalls says.)

Tonight I treated myself to a bottle of Simpatico No. 72 Ambergris bubble bath.  I realized I had to buy it when I kept returning to the bar soap and breathing it in.  "Oh, I could swim in this," I thought.  And then I saw the bubble bath and realized that yes, I could swim in this!  The scent reminds me of something from my childhood that I cannot place; it is musky and dark, yet clean and heady.  I am smitten.  

I still have one foot at the beach and one foot here at home.  I think after a few more ambergris bubble baths the transition will be complete, and summer can officially begin.