Carrying light

We are about to begin the second week of February. This is when I always decide that it’s time to finish my book list for the prior year, but I still have to finish writing about a few books. I started writing about Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry early last year, just as I finished it, and then I started writing about other things and I forgot all about it. 

Note: My whole life could be accurately summed up in sentences that go exactly like that last one: “I started doing (ABC) and then I started doing (XYZ) and I forgot all about (ABC).” 

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Last year (meaning 2022), we went to Florida for a few days right after Christmas. We went for just four nights, and flew home on New Year’s Day 2023. This was not a trip planned by me and I wasn’t on board with the idea at first because first of all, Florida; and secondly, I don’t really love traveling during the holidays other than a quick overnight to Philadelphia.  

Not only was I not on board with the trip, I actually really dreaded it. It was Florida during Christmas week, so I expected a worst-case scenario of flight cancellations and missed connections and being stranded in an airport or forced to rent a car and drive home from somewhere far below the Mason-Dixon line. I also really like being at home during the Christmas holidays, and I didn’t want to give that up. But my husband convinced us that we should get away and that we’d have a good time, and so we drove home from an overnight visit to Philadelphia, packed our bags, and the next morning, a friend drove us to Glenmont Metro, where we got on a train to Reagan National Airport. 

It was on the Metro ride that I started to feel a little bit better about the trip. For once in my life, I hadn’t overpacked (taking Metro to the airport is a very effective overpacking deterrent) and it had been terribly cold for a few days, so I was happy about getting out of the cold, if nothing else. The flight took off on time and landed on time, and we had no trouble summoning an Uber. And then we walked out of the terminal at Tampa airport and stepped into the Florida sunshine, and I was so happy to be there; happy with my whole body. Traffic from the airport to our hotel was dreadful (Tampa is no joke) but I didn’t care because I had never been there before and it was nice to see new sights. 

The next morning, far from home and work and school with no household chores or other responsibilities, we left the hotel and just walked around Clearwater Beach, getting the lay of the land, visiting shops and strolling on the beach and stopping wherever we liked to see a sight or to have a drink and a snack or to buy a silly souvenir. We put our feet in the chilly Gulf of Mexico, collected shells, and just sat around in the sun. When we returned to our hotel, we swam in the pool and I sat on a lounge chair wrapped up in towels and a hoodie, and I read like there was no tomorrow. That was a good vacation. 

The last book that I read during the trip was Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry, and it appears on my 2023 list because I finished it on New Year’s Day on the plane ride home.  It was my 2022 - 2023 crossover book, and the only book that I read last year that was on actual pages between actual covers (ir was a Christmas present from my son). 

I hardly remember a thing about the book itself, except for some funny stories about Michelle Obama’s older brother. It was vacation reading and I experience vacation books differently from books that I read during odd moments of everyday life. Vacation reading has a dreamlike quality - vacations are the only time when I read like I used to read when I was young, as though the book and I are the only things that existed. Thinking back on it now, the whole trip had a dreamlike quality; a few sun-drenched days when I really truly didn’t think about anything that I needed to do. I just swam and walked and slept and ate and read in Florida’s winter warmth and sunshine. A few days in the sunshine can get you through the darkest time of year. It’s like a light you can carry through the winter.