R and R

[image error] So this was my view last Saturday, just before I boarded a northbound jet from the Turks and Caicos islands to snowy New York City, where a foot of snow (nothing to the three feet that battered eastern Long Island and New England) was waiting for me.

This was my second trip to one of the most perfect island getaways you can imagine. It would have been idyllic under any circumstances but was made more so because I had just sent off the (more or less) finished manuscript of Hotel Florida to my editor and my agent, and could finally exhale after months of pedal-to-the-metal writing; and my husband (the Thought Leader) and I were spending our holiday with two dear friends whose lovely beachside condo we were staying in, and who are the best company in the world. This is what we did: We got up very early in the morning, so as to swim or walk the beach while the sun was rising (if you’re prompt you can watch a flock of plovers wake up, run around and rouse one another, and then fly off twittering over the sea). We did the New York Times crossword and read the news stories and talked about them. We lay in the sun (OK, I lay in the sun -- everyone else sensibly sat in the shade of the coral beach umbrellas) or swam in the impossibly blue and gentle sea. We read (I took William Boyd’s Waiting for Sunrise, perfect brainy beach reading). We talked. We bought fish from the fishermen who bring their catch to a roadside parking lot. We cooked. We had people to lunch, and to dinner. We talked some more. We watched all the award screeners I’d brought with me to catch up on and talked about them. It was completely delicious. And it was hard to tear ourselves away, particularly to the blizzard-struck northeast.

But we did it; and imagine what happened? I got back to my desk and two new potential projects materialized, both as different as could be from the material I’ve been dealing with in the past months. I guess it was a signal that my mini-break was over and it was time to get back to work – which I will have to do in any case when I get my editor’s comments on Hotel Florida. But instead of feeling overwhelmed, which I might have just a month ago, I was excited and invigorated by the prospects of each, and eager to explore where they might take me.

Before I go further with them, or with Hotel Florida, though, I’ve got one more mini-break planned: tomorrow the T.L. and I head north, to the Adirondacks, for our semi-annual visit to two other friends who live on the banks of the Ausable River. We’ll cook and cross-country ski and talk and watch the Downton Abbey finale. Then it will be time to return to reality. I guess.