Enlarging Vacation's Perspective

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What's water?'"

(from This is Water by David Foster Wallace)

Vacations at their best have something of that quality -- immersed in their own encompassing world so present and complete that every other reality, while not quite disappearing, at least recedes to the murky shadows and shapes moving distantly on the surface above.

That's something of how it has been these last several days away -- the creation of another world whose water we swam around in created its own kind of "new normal." It's not that we ceased to notice the blessing -- every day we noted our smiles and virtually absorbed the beauty and grace around us through our pores. Rather, the blessing became somehow enveloping and all encompassing, developing its own orienting rhythm and familiarities -- the quirky personality of the Inn room that became our miniature home; the coffee miraculously ready in the morning, the chipper "Is there anything else I can get for you" of the server as she set down our breakfast, the barest skeletal shape of plans for the day that we fleshed out with Dave and Jane while finishing off the scrambled eggs or French Toast, the cookie waiting in the afternoon, the fireplace at dinner and the winsome companionship of the servers we have come to know by name; the special kindnesses and generosities given and received. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to visit a cider mill or a cheese farm or simply drive or hike around for hours at a time.

"What's water?" we, too, might well have responded had someone asked about this experience in which we were swimming.

It is, I recognize, all about the power of perspective -- tilted and shifted yet again by a day in airports schlepping bags and fumbling with now foreign feeling keys in the door lock of a darkened front porch that only awkwardly, reticently makes room again for us within.

And now, after a night in my own bed, with suitcases disgorged and the laundry room humming and the requirements of catching up already scratching at my consciousness, the perspective broadens even more. What only yesterday morning had seemed like the very world, itself -- the entire ocean of our reality -- gradually reveals its more authentic truth:

It hasn't been the ocean, after all, in which we have been living these past several days, but only one small, incredibly beautiful and blessed drop gracing one tiny branch of a very much larger world...
...that now welcomes us home.