Our family vacation to Cape Cod, immediately followed by Vacation Bible School at our church, has kept me away from Wild Trumpet Vine for three weeks. I’m reorganizing and restructuring, picking through the accumulation.
It’s slow going. As everyone lucky enough to enjoy an actual vacation knows, the aftermath can be a struggle. I’m not complaining, simply stating the facts. There is, of course, the unloading of the jampacked car, after which the house becomes a confused muddle of disparate, sometimes nearly unrecognizable objects. Our vacation gear included bulky black plastic bags filled with slightly soured swimsuits and mounds of beach towels, still-sandy aqua-socks, a million pairs of other assorted footwear, enough damp rain jackets for a family of twelve, my Truro Vineyards wine, piles of sticky Penney Patch candy, the shells we foraged from the bay, the salt we boiled out of the sea, containers of half-eaten car snacks, and bundles of dog-eared magazines.
All this settled in uncomfortably with odd Vacation Bible School props such as Christmas lights, Bible-era robes, a blue wig, a garden trellis and a homemade catapult. Fortunately, H and D put most of the beach paraphernalia–the sand chairs and umbrellas, boogie boards, the thousand and one toys for throwing and digging, and H’s windsurfing board and sails–straight into the basement. An enormous tower of mail soon arrived, nearly all of it unwelcome. Kiko, back from the kennel, had begun to shed in dramatic earnest. A single pat of his skinny back sent clouds of fur whirling through the air, the final seasoning to the late-summer stew we were simmering. The clean-up is ongoing.
The lighthouse at Provincetown’s Wood End, seen from near the jetty.
Provincetown Harbour, showing the Pilgrim Monument and the towers of the Unitarian Church and and Town Hall.
The Wood End Light, seen from our stomping grounds in Truro.