I Knew This Would Happen

Sooner or later I knew I’d end up blipping my dinner due to time constraints. This evening it was a bowl of “Cider Sage Butternut Squash Soup” from the local deli, and it was hot, comforting and very good on a dark, rainy evening.

Actually, the bowl is more interesting than the soup. It’s one of a set of two bowls with matching mugs which were gifts to commemorate a very special one-of-a-kind family vacation in 2001. One set says “San Tropez”, the other “Nice”, both places we visited on a Mediterranean cruise that began with a flight into Paris, a train ride to Nice and then several days on the Wind Surf cruise ship down the coast of Italy, stopping at various ports of call along the way.

In one of those rare moments when something happens that creates a family story which gets told and re-told forever, a family member who shall remain nameless, determined not to go ashore when the ship arrived at San Tropez because he had booked a massage in the ship’s spa. He will forever, or at least as long as I live, never be allowed to forget that he missed setting foot on San Tropez because of a massage – something I presumed was not only easy to get anywhere, but far less important than seeing San Tropez. I will, at every available opportunity, seek out things that commemorate San Tropez and give them to him as gifts. When re-telling the story of the trip to someone, a particularly satisfying moment arrives when we recount where we went and I am dramatically able to make the point that not all of us actually went to San Tropez.

Someday, I would love to take him to San Tropez. Just to be sure he was able to experience the moment we'd fly in since he’d absolutely have to get off the plane.