My travel agent

Sarah loved to travel. She took me all over the world. When she got laid off from Peregrine, she talked about going to school to become a travel agent. She used to set up fantasy trips on Travelocity, just for fun. And it might just be that she is still arranging things for us.

Tish and Francis spend a week in Hilton Head every August with Aunt Marylou and Uncle Jim (Tish’s sister and brother-in-law). Somehow it was decided that my mom would trade in her timeshare in Kaua‘i, so we could all get together in Hilton Head. She immediately found a unit in the same building, for the same week. The owner was moving to Kaua‘i, and was eager to swap. It was almost too easy. Coincidence? It just seems… unlikely.

My sister, Veronica, was there as well. Nate doesn’t get to see his Nonna or his Auntie VeeVee very often, so he was thrilled.

We walked to the beach a couple of times, but it takes Nate a while to warm up to an unfamiliar situation. So he would cling to me until everyone was ready to leave, and then announce that he wanted to go wading, or build a sandcastle, or whatever it was I’d been exhorting him to do for the last hour.

In an effort to escape the suffocating heat and humidity, we discovered a small children’s museum right around the corner from our resort. They had a real airplane cockpit, complete with pilot’s hats, and a scale model of a pirate ship. You can imagine the screams when it was time to leave.

South Carolina in August, well… I don’t know if we need to go back any time soon, but we had a great time in spite of the weather.