Early Spring Volleyball
general
Out with the Old
Tomorrow’s Job
Back Home
But our thoughts are still on the beach.
Ormond Beach Day 3
Our third day began without any alarm, with any reminder that we had to get up at any particular hour at all. Yesterday, we received a message from our Vrbo host "Hope all is well and enjoy your weekend!" to which I replied, "Everything is going great. We’re being very lazy, which was the whole idea." Since we got up yesterday for the sunrise, I guess that wasn't really all that accurate. Today, though, it was. No alarm. No commitments. So we weren't all out of bed until after nine.
After a breakfast of K's lovely pancakes, we went for walk on the beach, heading south toward the Daytona area for a change. Daytona Beach was in the news this morning for four separate shooting incidents over the weekend. Apparently, it's filled with college students partying for spring break, but here we are, just fifteen miles south, and there's no one around and not a hint of any kind of violence.
At least, not that type of violence. We watched a sea bird of some sort -- here my landlubber nature shows specularly -- catch a fish of some sort and fly about above us for a while. It seemed unable to decide what exactly to do, to land on the beach or to strafe the water's surface.
And just a bit further down the beach, a fisherman who'd caught a bonnet-head shark, itself quite the predator. It uses it's bonnet-shaped head to detect changes in electrical charge as it swims along the ocean floor. When it detects a change, it attacks that spot in the hopes of finding a blue crab or some mollusk or other.
All the while, more potential violence just off the shore: squadron after squadron of pelicans (that's what a group of them in flight is actually called -- what a perfect name) flew along the coast, not seemingly hunting (for they none ever dove), but also not seemingly uninterested in what was going on below them. Perhaps that's for the best: each time they dive, they do more damage to their vision until they eventually become completely blind. I suppose at that point, they starve. The cruelty of the natural world.
It gets me wondering how relatively violent we are as a species compared to other species. We like to think of life in the twenty-first as relatively calm, peaceful even, and it is for most of in the developed world. But the violence we do to each other in other parts of the world, and the violence we do to the Earth itself and most species, makes us unquestionably the most dangerous species on the planet. We are, after all, capable of all but destroying life on the whole planet in a a number of ways. Sure, we don't often end up violently devoured by some superior species, but we do more than enough violence to each other to make up for that.
But we can play cards.
Ormond Beach Day 2
"It's probably the most convenient time of year to catch a sunrise," K argued as she began her argument last night that we should get up early enough to watch the sunrise over the ocean. With it so close to daylight savings time switch, the sun rises at a very reasonable 7:30. It took surprisingly little convincing, so at 6:50, we were all up and heading to the beach.
We weren't the only ones. An older gentleman -- "older" probably meaning my age by now or just a touch older; I keep forgetting I'm in my fifties now -- was out setting up his fishing gear, and a few others were venturing out, coffee cups in head, to watch the sunrise.
I was hoping the large cloud mass on the horizon would make for a more beautiful sunrise than it actually did. Still, having the four of us there made it a memorable way to begin our first day here at Ormond Beach, which is only a 1.5-ish hour drive from UF, where L is studying.
After a half hour on the beach, we returned from a solid breakfast of bacon and eggs with biscuits before all decided that 9:00 am is a perfect time for a late-morning nap. We've all been sleep-deprived over the last few weeks, and since we had absolutely nothing planned for the day except some time on the beach, we all trundled back to our bed
In the afternoon, the kids took another nap (we did come here, after all, to relax) while K and I went on a walk.
Ormond Beach Day 1
We've come down to Florida to spend a couple of days on the beach with L. In some miracle of timing, all three of us connected to or involved in education have spring break the same week. So we arrived today and went straight to the beach after dinner.
Twenty Years Ago
Spring
Spring has begun poking its head around the corner, hinting at what's to come with warm sunny days that have brought the yellow bells to bloom and encouraged the lawn to shoot up in a few spots. The blueberry bushes at the base of the driveway are already opening blossoms and whispering of the cobblers and preserves that K will be making in the coming weeks. Trees are budding, and soon the wisteria that hangs from the trees across from our house will start sharing its blue and white blooms. I've mowed once, and K has begun planning our spring planting.
We all begin thinking about the summer and our trip to Polska to celebrate Babcia's eightieth birthday -- it will be the first time we've ever gone back-to-back summers. My first year at the new school is coming to a close slowly (only one more quarter remaining), and since we'll be moving into our new building next year (though we keep hearing it will be ready by late April, I doubt it), it's like starting over a second year in a row.
That's the heart of spring: starting over -- the beginning of warmth, of evenings on the back deck with friends, of early-morning light that stretches into the late evening, of fresh. We brush off the malaise of the late winter (inasmuch as we have such a thing here in the south) and warm ourselves again.
Everything seems to be ending and beginning at the same time. The Boy is finishing middle school; the Girl is beginning college, truly learnings is rhythms. And next week, spring ends with temperatures falling to the twenties...
Peace Center Performance
This evening the Boy's youth orchestra had a concert at the Peace Center -- the premier performance space in Greenville. It's where we saw Fiddler on the Roof, Mahler's Symphony No. 2, and The Sound of Music, among other shows. Yo Yo Ma is playing there in a month.
During the second piece, E had a solo: "a mournful trombone" according to the program notes.
K teared up to hear what he's been working on for weeks in its full context. I might have experienced a touch of dampness as well.