Skip to main content

Twirling in Sunset


 We have finally arrived!

All year we have talked about getting away.  We have talked to friends over dinners of our elaborate plans involving months away in Europe or the Tropics...  me taking cooking lessons in Paris.  Mr. Urban making his way across France reading books and tasting wines.  Our Girl picking up foreign languages and cultures, poised and pleasant after long plane rides.

That had been the plan, but life had plans of its very own for us.  Plans that left us utterly incapable of making one more plan!  When the time came to plan a get away, we thought about what is the easiest, most relaxing, and least maintenance ticket out of town....



Three clicks later, we ended up at our favorite resort in Maui.

The days are unstructured and truly relaxing. Swimming. Lounging.  Kayaking.  Lounging. Long Breakfasts.  Taking the time to lather on generous amounts of coconut moisturizer.  Playing on the sand.  Sipping tropical juices on ice while lounging.  Having picnic lunches on our balcony over looking the ocean... not knowing if it is even lunch time....  Meeting up for leisurely dinners with friends that happen to be staying here at the same time we are.

And while our girl and I have been completely faithful to our relaxation only plan, Mr. Urban has been a busybody.  Each time we lounge, we nap, we water-color, we read a Leo Lionni book, he  disappears for a run, tries a new water sport, runs down to the spa.  He has been feverishly reading  a book by Steve Martin.  And in down times, in between acts at the Luau or the rare moment lounging at the beach, he has been testing friends' latest technologies on his iPhone...  He is invigorated and looking at his beaming face I feel all my muscles relax even more.


This morning we came face to face in the ocean with giant, peaceful, beautiful turtles.  Being so close to this blue ocean, these lovely tropical plants and flowers, this creamy sand, the simple smell of salty moisture in air, and almost religiously observing of the colors in the sky during sunrises and sunsets makes me feel thankful and blessed.  I asked the Urban girl if she would promise to remember always her time at the ocean with her mommy and daddy, when she wasn't yet Four.  She said she would.

Urban Girl: " Daddy I will get married at this church when I am bigger".   Daddy "Oh Silly, We're Never Letting You Go!  Now Let's Twirl Some More...."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FORTY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS AND FORTY DAYS

My life and the life of every Iranian I know,  is bookended by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It doesn't matter that I was barely old enough to remember this historic event or that I spent the decades that followed it, far far away from Iran, the Revolution of 1979 is a heavy, tacky, cruel bookend that defines who we used to be, who we are and the recurring nightmares and dreams we’ve had for 43 years.  I can pinpoint with certainty the exact month after which a general feeling of displacement settled like sticky dust all over me, my family, my classroom, my teachers, our closest friends, our home, our city… In the years and decades that followed, I never experienced another event that brought such a magnitude of change to the nucleus of life.   Not in Iran, and definitely not after a whole life lived outside of Iran.  Perhaps only recently, the experience of the Trump years and the Covid-19 pandemic, the significant fear, change and frustration that both events brought to our col

On Donald Trump, Crunchy Bananas and our Children... A "How To" on keeping up Spirits and Sanity

The other morning at breakfast, my four year old looked, yet again somberly, at the breakfast before her.  Despite having enthusiastically selected a hodgepodge of liberally salted hard boiled egg whites on the side of toasted hamburger buns, strawberries and vanilla yogurt and a cup of milk, she still could not bring herself to enjoy her breakfast.  Her face was wrinkled, as was mine with exasperation from yet another failed attempt at assembling a palatable breakfast for my picky eater. This one, she is quite the philosopher.  And before I could ask her why she wasn't eating, she said: "Two Things!"  Holding up two tiny fingers.  "The smells of these foods I picked, don't go with each other! And I wish Donald Trump would magically become Hillary Clinton, and the word (world) would be GREAT again".     Despite our best efforts to protect our children from the anxiety of these times, they are alert and picking up on the mood (and the lingo) in the wor

Safa

I have always loved words.  The way some people love shiny new objects.  As soon as I heard a new word, a word that captured my imagination, my energy, my hundreds of unnamed inner thoughts and feelings, I would latch on to it with fearceness, joy and curiosity.  I have also always been intrigued by how regular old words can be used in an unexpected context and evoke bursts of unexpected feelings in the listener, such as laughter, anticipation or tears.  I would search for those words coming out of the mouths of everyone around me, and mentally catalog them like a dutiful librarian, and await the opportunity to say the words with my own mouth out loud to an audience, or better yet use it in an essay where the teacher could grade it, get a kick out of it, or read it to the whole class.      As a child I always loved the Persian word Safa .   For one thing the word sounds so simple, yet sophisticated and beautiful, and for another, each of my memories of hearing this word is stored in th