Leaving with a Sense of Clarity

Well, I am sitting in the airport in Bridgetown (which Bridget calls Bridgettown).  I have been thinking a lot about my visit and about my departure back to reality. I am not even going to comment on the snow.  That is a given.  As far as leaving, I have to say that I am neither happy nor sad.  I am just accepting this as reality.  I have a life in Canada to which I need to return.  I have missed many of you so much. Some of you I haven't heard from in a very long time and I find this so amazing!!

I have to admit though, I am very retrospective.  I am pondering.  Not the meaning of life or anything so profound, but just what did I gain from my time away. 

My initial concerns are now moot.  Derek and I teamed up to e-parent our "adult" children.  They actually did ok.  To be honest, they seemed to survived quite well with minimal intervention beyond phone calls, texting, skype ...  They are making their own way in Toronto.  They are happy.  They are healthy.  They looked out for each other, in a way that Kate said "is family".  

Are these the same smelly sticky kids I once knew?

Over the past 6 weeks, I have had what we all crave; the luxury of time.  I had solitude.  I had the chance live within another culture in a strange land.  I had time to truly reflect on family, on marriage, on balance and health, on ambition and spirituality, on friendship and social responsibility.  I also had fun. 

I think the greatest thing I take away from this experience is the search for a sense of clarity.   I have the feeling that clarity does exist, but it is transient.  It is something that escapes us, when the dishwasher needs to be unloaded. When it is snack day. When there is an unbelievable dead line. When you are going through the bumps and bruises of a relationship.  When there is sickness. When there is death. I guess to sum it up in a cliche way;  Life.   

To understand clarity, I think one must except that it is one of those things that gets lost.  What I have found, though, is that anything I have lost, has had a way of turning up at the point that I am actually looking for something else. So I guess this is my understanding of a sense of clarity and  I think this view has come from embracing an opportunity to spend 6 weeks in Barbados, "because I can".