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Vacation. I dreaded it. I was juggling so many balls in the air, leaving for a week would surely make them all come crashing down. You know, until I got there and didn’t want to leave. The beach, the sunsets, the rolling storms, and THE CRABS. I sat on the beach until I was crispy, let my hair air dry in the warm summer beachy breeze, shared laughs until the late evening hours, and ate Fritos for dinner because I WAS ON VACATION. It was such a peaceful and relaxing week surrounded by the entire side of my dad’s family. It cleared my head, and recharged my body, you see, I’m not very good at taking a break, taking time for myself, MY SANITY PEOPLE. On the outside my job may seem very glamorous, but I can assure you, that although I love it, it requires an infinite number of hours of hard work. Where’s the off button on this thing?! And as I sit here, editing until the wee hours of the morning as the rest of this city sleeps peacefully, I take a break and look through the photographs from our vacation for the hundredth time. Promising to do it again soon, and promising myself to try to be present in my life.

I’m working on a short movie from our vacation, you know, when I get a free moment, but for now here are a couple of my favorite photographs from that week. And check back tomorrow for one of many weddings I have yet to blog, Katie and Mike’s wedding at the Oaks in St. Michaels, Maryland.

They divorced when I was seven-ish.  I thought it was the end of the world.  And to me, it really was.  We were ‘broken,’  I was broken.  And then slowly but surely we had to put our family back together piece by piece.  Albeit, apart pieces, because of course, there was a Mom’s, and Dad’s.  Separate toothbrushes, two beds, different vacations, even different bedtimes, and Dad’s was a little more lenient on the latter.  But, things would never go back to the way they were, this was the new normal.  And as I grew up, and became accustomed to my new normal, something funny happened.  The arguments of past years became more few and far between and my parents began speaking words to each other, and not yelling them.  There were casual hellos, and friendly conversations, family dinner nights on Sundays, holidays, and now vacations.

BULLSHIT! Amanda insisted, while studying each others’ poker face.  She had a bad habit of always calling Mom out, which unfortunately lead to her acquiring a huge stack of playing cards.  And Dad’s was definitely the hardest to decipher; truth or lie?  And as I sat around that coffee table, in our beach house in Florida, I didn’t want it to end because it meant much more to me then just that game of cards.  It was my family together.  My whole, broken and put back together, still divorced, amazing family, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  Because you see, no matter how confusing and broken you may feel, in the end, it always works out.

We struggled to push the glass door open and carefully made our way onto the back balcony in the pitch black night.  Our eyes had yet to adjust, grandpa, you out here? I hit my foot on the white lounge chair.  Yea I’m here, yoookaay he said, in his always chipper voice.  We felt around and seated ourselves across the lounge chair next to him.  Slowly our eyes revealed the starry night shining out over the waves crashing in the gulf, and our young ninety-four year old grandfather sipping on his mojito.  Brian, Amanda and I sat there in the warm summers night as we listened to his stories about what it was like when he was growing up, the civil war era, working for Dupont, and how he swept my grandmother, the beautiful Alice Hill, off her feet and away from the guy she was going with, during that very first car ride.

He has lead a full happy life, and through his recent travels in the last few years to Ireland, Alaska, and Hawaii, it had lead him to this point.  This night.  This balcony.  Sitting with three of his grandchildren, sharing stories of years past.  I couldn’t help but want to hear more stories, but in true Grandpa fashion his straw had reached dry ice at the bottom of his cup.  He had finished his drink, and needed another one, of course.  We walked off the balcony, leaving the stars and waves behind, but not the moments.  Those moments, on that balcony, they stayed with us.