Best Day Ever

The weather was spotty when we woke up, but more sunny than cloudy so we declared it a beach day. Upon arrival onto the sand, I thought it might be too cold to stay all day, even though I knew that was Raf's plan. It was about 11 am and I figured that, since the sun doesn't really set until about 10:30 pm, maybe it was really more like 9 am, weather-wise. So I hung in there... and finally allowed the kids to convince me to go in the water, which I complained about because it felt cold when I dipped my toes in.

After a few waves, I was like a fish and found my sea legs. I convinced Serena to swim to one of the 3 diving platforms around the bay and we slid down the blue slide, jumped from the side into the inner "swimming pool" and then dove off the back so that we could swim and touch the big yellow buoy at the far end of the swim area. As we swam back to shore, Emme waved to us and convinced us to swim back to the platform, then to the buoy, then across the bay to another diving platform closer to the beach in front of the Parte Vieja (Old Town).

Emme said the diving platform reminded her of the movie Mamma Mia! Serena kept saying, As long as I'm here, on a platform in the middle of the ocean in Spain, I may as well dive/jump/slide. Even I set aside a lifelong fear of sharks to just enjoy the moment, swimming alongside my kids to the buoy so that I could truly savor their exuberance, strength and stamina. For every unruly thought about Jaws, I calmed myself down with a deep breath and a new thought that life would not always be like this. The girls may not always coax and cajole me to accompany them on their adventures toward something new, scary and thrilling -- I may not be there to accompany them or they will find new friends and lovers who will be their first choice. But I made a discovery out there as I reached out to touch the yellow buoy: once-in-a-lifetime moments come along every second, if we can be open to them and allow them to carry us in their wake.

After we left the platform, we back-floated on the water, a tradition for the women on my side of the family, toes up, head pointing out to sea. With each wave that came upon us, I'd shout, Float it! and we'd quickly get into position, the three of us lying peacefully on our backs, bobbing along. Eventually, we could touch our feet to the sand again and caught some waves into shore. As I sat down on my towel, I lost sight of the girls and panicked for a moment. Then I spotted them, two little brunette heads bobbing on the waves and swimming toward the platform again, this time with Raf next to them and Marlowe, in her hot pink rash guard, on his back. It's too far for me, Marlowe had said earlier this morning. But the allure of the swimming platform, and the desire to just do it, obviously caught her off-guard, too.

We may not be back here again. It is like a motto in my head lately, a metaphor not for this trip or the physical geography that we're traveling but for the very moments of our lives together. We may not be back again.

We may as well float.

A 10-hour flight with kids, an "after" and "before" story

These were taken en route to Bilbao, Spain, the second leg of our European journey.

For comparison's sake, this was taken before... Before the limo ride from our house to LAX. Before the 2 and a half hour wait for our flight to Paris. Before I watched the first 20 minutes of "Nine" twice and then heard that the audio/video would be shut down for the entire flight. Before the lady next to me moved the arm rest out of the way and may as well have sat *on* me rather than next to me. Before yet another of my kids' iTouches came in fatal contact with water, its dreaded villain. Before our family's near meltdown at the currency exchange at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, due to no ice cream stands and the adversarial relationship that the French seem to have with both air conditioning and ice. Before I discovered the reason we hadn't gotten our luggage from the carousel was, heck, we were in the wrong place... no wonder everyone else was gone. Before we realized that it was a good thing I only packed two suitcases because apparently they don't rent Suburbans in Europe (their version is an Audi 4-door with manual transmission). Before we drove an hour through Spain and fell in love with the green countryside. Before we landed at our pretty apartment in San Sebastian, with views of the beautiful bay-like beach, saw a few topless sunbathers , an orange striped banana hammock, and a parade or rally for something or another. Before our kids insisted that we go back to the apartment at 9:30 at night to get bathing suits because the sun was still setting and the waves were warm and the lights illuminating the surrounding boardwalk came on and made the whole city appear to be magically bejeweled.

Basically, before we fell in love with San Sebastian and decided that yeah, we could do that 10-hour flight and 2-hour connection to Bilbao again, if it meant we could be here.