The first day in a summer in a vacation rental is pretty hellish. You have no system in place, no perch where you always put your glasses. There are people you adore everywhere, hungry and paralyzed. Even though it’s just past four in the afternoon, I decide (incorrectly, as it turns out) it would be a fun to open the welcome wine the realtor placed in the refrigerator. I guilt/peer pressure my daughter and son-in-law into joining me. Now I am every bit as discombobulated, only crankier.
I realize the problem goes deeper than not knowing the house and its contents or the whereabouts of those contents. I also lack most of what I need, because our luggage is on a later ferry. Add to that I don’t know where I am, despite the fact I have been coming to this island my whole life. I can see Nantucket Sound to the north, but I don’t know how we got to this place other than in a rental Jeep along a series of dirt roads. I couldn’t point the way to town if you paid me. Tomorrow, I will figure everything out, but tonight, I go to bed after a grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner and group rendition of sea shanties in honor of Jake’s birthday. I successfully set up the coffee maker. I make a spot on a chair near our bed for Charlie to sleep.
Finally, I literally climb into an abnormally high bed, exhausted from the rigors of the day, to drift off in the eerie aftermath of the disruption of my normal life. This first day away is always weird, and always, I am never happier, or more alive.
I’m glad you opened that wine!