An Homage to Vacation, While I’m on Vacation…

I originally posted this a while ago – like five years, a while… It’s a piece I wrote about my Happy Place (i.e., “my” hammock on “my” private island at “my” hotel in Aruba).  This is my attempt to describe it.  At the end, you will see a picture of it – let me know if you think I did it justice… I’m on vacation with The Husband this week (no kids, teehee, we barely know what to do with ourselves… oh wait, yes we do, sleep and eat hot food and go to the bathroom alone, hooray!) Anyway, I thought it was a good thing to think about while I’m gone – lord knows we can ALL use a little happy place in our lives every now and again… So enjoy reading about mine!

The Happiest Place on Earth hides in Aruba.  Its only residents are free-range flamingoes, a gaggle of hermit crabs, and the occasional wandering lizard or flyaway flip-flop blown to sea.  And the hammock, of course.

On a private island, at the end of a rocky promontory jutting off of the edge of a quiet beach, there is a hammock.  It is weathered and worn – the ropes practically smooth, fibers softened by years of salt spray and the sunscreen from sun-warmed bodies.  The wood frame is bleached the bone gray white that only blazing Caribbean sun and furious Caribbean storms produce.  The netting sags just right, dipping gently in the middle from the combined weight of child-pirates in ships tossing on the winds, solitary souls losing themselves in a thousand written words, and dreamers drowning in the promises of the crazy-blue sea.

The quiet of the hammock is not absolute – the mishmash of waves, birds, and the occasional far-off groans of a barge whistle make sure of that – but it is a soft din, a gentle cacophony, and it blots out furious head-noises and clanging thoughts better than absolute silence ever could.

The view from the hammock is also not absolute.  Laying back, gently cradled by the weathered ropes, the first things you see are your browned (or reddened, as the case may be) toes – possibly, if you are very lucky, tangled up with those of the one soul with whom you would willingly share the happiest place on earth.  Poking through the web of ropes, drinking in the sun and salt, your toes will be forced to unclench and forgive you for the daily irritations of shoes, socks, and boots; of pounding on pavement and striding through corridors; of the indignity of standing in endless lines for ridiculous reasons.

Toes aside, all you can see while trundled away in the hammock is colors – blues and greens you would swear could not be found in nature, if you were not witnessing them firsthand; white foamy froth that smashes against the breakwater like a whirling dervish; the occasional cottony puff of a cloud or gray streak of a gull racing to its own happy place.  You can drown in all that color.  It whisks all conscious thought away, leaving only sense memories behind – the green of fresh limes, their sour-sweet goodness coating your tongue; the white of melting marshmallows, their sticky-sweet tendrils clinging to your lips; the guileless blue of a baby’s eyes as they soul-gaze everyone they see in their search for the lost meanings of everything.

And the smells.  The Happiest Place on Earth reeks of giddiness.  It is all carnival rides and first kisses – a combination of sun and salt, coconuts and fish, freedom and joy.  Joy like you knew as a child and never have since – the joy of presents on Christmas morning, post-Halloween candy sorting, and the first day of summer vacation, the kind of joy that is so pure and limitless that it hurts your heart because you cannot imagine how you will survive without it.

That is what the Happiest Place on Earth is like.

But as with all good things, your time there too must eventually end.  If you are lucky though, a little bit of that scent will cling to you when you leave – your toes will vaguely recall what it was to be free, your eyes to drown in overwhelming gaiety, your ears to ring with peals of summer – and a tiny bite of joy will worm its way to your very core and keep you going until the next time you arrive…