Since we’ve been going to Isles of Capri, we’ve endured a nice handful of beach casualties. Barnacle cuts. Jellyfish stings. Snappy crab pinches. They’re more like badges of honor, really, or markers that distinguish one Isles of Capri trip from another. Yesterday, our list grew to include stepping on a bee (me) but far more exciting, witnessing the dispatch of the Isles of Capri firemen who sped away to save a 700-pound dolphin that jumped aboard a pontoon boat and listening to the firemen recall the event when they returned, blood-stained and exhausted. Apparently, it made national news (chance of it happening is 1 in 3,000,000)…and boat passengers and dolphin are, thankfully, all fine.

I’m sorry to say I can’t say the same for the bee.

We were feeling pretty convicted being that we hadn’t been attending services at the Church of the Holy Beach. But, lucky for us, the beach is merciful among its many other qualities, it welcomed us back, and we picked up where we left off.

Our happy place on the Isles of Capri is nothing overly fancy–a family-owned restaurant, a tiki hut bar with a thatched roof, a dock and a skinny stretch of beach, long enough for a shell-scouring walk but short enough to keep an eye on the kids without panicking. And it’s perfect for us.

And, for all the times we’ve been there, it’s different every time. Same beach, same kayaks, same bathing suits, but somehow a different brew of energy and friends and feeling–but all good.

Yesterday was colorful and calm.

I like watching Brett in his element. More relaxed–as if that’s possible–and walking around with a bit of a swagger, as if there’s a part of his subconscious slightly aware that he found this little gem years ago and, like a fine explorer, shared the goodness with the masses…the many friends and family that now join us for a rousing Sunday service at the Church of the Holy Beach. Amen to that.

I know I’ve said it before, but so many of my feel-good moments at this place are just as much about recognizing that our kids are stashing memories as they are about the splendor of the present. We talk about what they will remember–how they will retell adventures of crab hunts and dock dives in their twenties–and we hope the presence of those memories will strengthen the importance of adventure and family and making time to appreciate things like how an adirondack sinks into wet sand, how fast an army of sand crabs can scurry up a mangrove trunk, or perhaps the more phenomenal recognition of how a random flying dolphin can land gracefully onto the deck of a boat.

We stashed another jar of beach memories onto our ever-growing shelf in our Isles of Capri cellar.

The Beach “Oh,” the most higly regarded of the “Oh” variety.

And though we don’t give much attention to the “whens” and “hows” of our babies’ milestones, we have a few requirements for things our babies must do and “sleep on Isle of Capri” is one of them. They take naps in tents, wrapped in towels, snuggled in arms, cradled against cold sand, shaded from the sun in wicker baskets, and they sleep greased in sunscreen and sweaty from the heat, but sleep they do. It’s a Hampton rite of passage.

Spring forward we have…into our favorite rituals of longer days and shorter nights.

Looking forward to more grouper baskets, Bob Marley, kissing shoulders that smell like coconut, synchronized dock dives, Johnson Bay sunsets, salty crater jumping, late beach storms that send us running into the tiki hut for coffee, and the many hundred moments I’ll stop for just a second and think “I hope they remember this.”

Game on, Isles of Capri. We’ll be back.

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Happy Monday!

And some of my favorite Isles of Capri jams canned and stored on my shelf: giant crab trip, giant starfish trip, growing belly trip, Memorial Day bash trip, giant ball of family love trip.

You know the annoying guy at the party who tells the same story every time? And you’re like, “Dude, we’ve heard this story fifty billion times, shut up” but he’s oblivious to your annoyance and he keeps going, chugging his drink and excitedly flailing his hands as he gets to the climax even though you know exactly what happens because you’ve heard it fifty billion times before…

With that said…

So, there’s this place we go on Sundays.

And I’ll cut to the chase.

Long story short…we like it. We like this place.

Friends joined us again. And we rolled in early, when the tide was high and the legs of the beach tables were sinking and slipping and the waters of the bay nearly kissed the edge of the tiki bar. So we swam and sipped and savored our walks up and down the little beach in search of shells and sticks and critters. We found them.

What the? We think this is a starfish of some sorts. Its stringy tentacles moved like worms. Ew.

And watching it all from my chair under the umbrella had me thinking about how my Florida girls will talk about these days years from now…how they will tell stories of shelling and crabbing and chasing dogs along the dock.

And I will smile and tell them that they learned to walk on those sands, that they tasted their first bites grouper on that shore and that their sweaty little bodies took naps in the shade, snuggled peacefully against towels over heaps of warm sand.

This is my favorite church. This is where I feel “it” the most. And whether its the rich friendship that rises with the tide from the friends that join us or the fact that at any given moment, my eyes can dart from Brett to the boys to my girls to my friends and be met with this obvious enjoyment and drunk-on-life enthusiasm, I breathe the salty air of this place in deep breaths and feel so fulfilled.

Beach blood runs deep in the veins of my girls. They eat sand and get dock slivers and will be able to tell the difference between high tide and low before kindergarten.

I may miss my Michigan Autumns but raising salty sea babies is just as grand.

And so is basking in Capri Sun all afternoon with a shore scattered with people you dig and littles you love.

And my favorite?
Definitely the salty craters.
It happens every time we come. When the sun starts to sink and the tide sleepily slips back, revealing the magic of a long stretch of craters cradling salty puddles. The best shells and critters skim to the surface and the open puddled terrain calls for skipping and crater-hopping and inventing fun games that make you look silly to the diners inside the window glow watching.
But we don’t care. We don’t care because our babies are happy and the sun is magic and life feels pretty much amazing right now.

Night Capri posseses its own magic, different from Day Capri but just as enchanting.

Brett’s eyes were closed, so I fixed it. There. Can’t even tell.

Fifty years from now, I don’t know what I’ll remember. I bet a lot of things I think are important now will be pretty silly when I look back. And I’m sure things I think are presently challenging will be small in comparison to the great big picture I’ll have at the end of all this. I tell myself that a lot when I step foot on the Worrying Road, especially with our added concerns. And I always come back to the place of stripping life down to the bare bones of the essentials. Of what really matters. And this? This Isle of Capri thing we got going? This matters. I’m pretty sure my last words aren’t going to be “Thank God I drove a car.” But you can be damned sure I’ll be talking about our place and our sunsets and the way the tide pooled up in the moonlight and the way we danced with the babies on the wood floors of the tiki bar and drank cold beer with friends until the moon slipped behind the bay.

That, my Friends, is the magic of the Never Ending Story.