No good vacation goes unpunished.
I have a head cold this morning with all the occluded, gray, dripping colors and sounds of the weather outside my office window. And I know I deserve it, because last week, at this time, I was still in the ocean off Maui, looking for sea turtles and, among a variety of other fishes, the magnificent Uhu, otherwise known as the Blue Bullethead Parrotfish.
Maybe it’s because I was raised Catholic that the adage that no good vacation goes unpunished is just something I’ve accepted, like coming out of a confessional with a long list of prayers for penance. Plus, this time we left the children at home. I don’t ask for pity. I don’t feel surprised. I pay gently with my spirit because, yeah, this is still a bargain. A head in the vise of a cold. Laryngitis. Cough, sniff, wipe. If it leads to hospitalization, so be it. Far be it for me to go a week experiencing life in gentle, warm, sunlit, fruit-filled and ethereally beautiful coves and not expect to land, back on the continent, back to earth, with a grinding, miserable thump.
But, while in paradise, I did make the most of it. The heck with golf clubs. The heck with The Shops at Wailea. We’re still in harmony with the nice people at Snorkel Bob’s in Kihei and, thanks to the wonders of an underwater video camera, some memories that can be replayed, on days like this.
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