It has been a while since my last post on Inauguration Day. After all of the insanity leading up to the election, my brain needed a little time to recover. I have not been sleeping well for some time. Not that I can’t sleep, just a lot of tossing and turning. My mother tells stories of me falling asleep while eating my dinner as a kid. Not much has changed. Once I sit still, whether watching TV or listening to music, it is literally a matter of seconds before I am out for the count. That is why this recent unsettled slumber is a tad concerning.
It has only been in the last year or so that my sleep has been interrupted. I now remember my dreams, something that rarely occurred before. The strange thing is that those dreams are not nightmares. They are fantastic dreams of sailing ships flying in a sky filled with cotton ball clouds or I am on a boat, cruising along in harbors strewn with the carnage of some apocalypse. In both cases I am not an active participant in the dream. Everything is third person, as if I am Scrooge visiting the future with some Christmastide specter. Honest to God, these are not drug or alcohol-induced images being projected onto the backside of my eyelids. I suspect it is just the neurons in my brain untangling themselves from the tousling they are subjected as they try to discern reality in this Wonderland.
In these days, we all need a happy place in which to retreat to protect ourselves from the unimaginable. For my wife and I, that place is the out-of-the way island of Anguilla, situated just off the shore of St. Martin. In a simpler time when money was not a concern, we were fortunate to escape there for a handful of days to celebrate one of her milestone birthdays. It was just she and I, enjoying the aquamarine waters of Rendezvous Bay. I think that the only time we looked at a watch or phone was when we had a reservation at the restaurant that remains to this day, the standard for which we measure romance.
That trip feels like an eternity away. It is hard to believe that life could possibly be so carefree. It is my hope that some day my wife and I will be able to once again enjoy such serenity, if even for a day. If not, we can always dream of our happy place.
