In Sync

I am was staying in the hoitty toitty Palm Beach area of Florida.  The mansions are multi-million dollar monstrosities, the shopping is fantastic if you have the reserves, and just outside the luxurious resort areas are some very striking neighborhoods of poverty and crime. Yesterday afternoon, within a few blocks of the infinity edge swimming pool at one of the hotels, stood an inebriated woman dressed for her night work outside a nightclub, if you get my drift.

The place where I am staying is a place where people (usually from Chicago or New York) wear rather elaborate jaw-dropping jewelry to the swimming pool.  Their children are stocky verging on fat and have rather intense attitudes about who is in charge of their lives...they or their parents.  Then the parents open their mouths and you wonder where they got their education as well and you forgive the children.  (Sorry for my prejudices.)  Still the place is really uncrowded for an Easter week and my grandchildren can find plenty of room for fun either at the beach or one of the two pools or the playground. 

As I sit on the balcony of the condo where we are staying, I have my little grandson who will turn one in a few days in my lap with his heavy head resting against my breasts.  He is fighting stomach flu and lying lethargically with the side of his face tucked into my arm as he watches the waves greet the shore.  We are sitting outside because every time he sees one of his parents he demands they take him away from this old lady, but once they are out of sight, he is my little surrendered lover.  The only sound is that of  the soothing waves and some distant music from the swimming pools fifteen stories below us.  I am enjoying the way he has given himself over totally to my arms in spite of being in that stage where mommy and daddy are the preferred mode of transportation and rest.

An ocean breeze floats wisps of his baby hair up and down near my cheek. 

I sing a little lullaby and even though I am off-key he looks up at me with such adoration that I keep on singing.  He has that honest innocence of love in his eyes that your dog has when he sees you each day.  The kind of love you probably do not fully deserve, but are more than willing to take.

There is a three-quarter moon hanging in the mid-morning sky and the gang of 12 pelicans is making their routine morning rounds up and down catching the rising air drifts over the beach.  We both watch them wishing we could fly like kites up high.

I have caught his stomach flu and not been able to enjoy any of the expensive and inexpensive meals we have eaten out.  I have been on a liquid diet for 4 days with no appetite for anything including my favorite wine, but I really do not care when he is in my arms and we are avoiding the beach packing chaos that is taking place back inside the condo.  For this brief precious time in his life and mine, we are in sync and I am totally happy.