Sometimes I’m reminded that while I talk about Tobago fairly often here, I haven’t shared much about our time there. Now seems like a good time to escape there for a little bit.
With current events, it’s hard to imagine traveling again right now, but someday, we will all be dreaming and planning trips again…. Well, I’m dreaming right now. But the planning will have to wait.
One of my favorite things about Tobago is the food. Tobago can do fresh like nobody’s business, but also fried, and carbs, and comfort food. Corn soup, macaroni pie (similar to mac and cheese but more dense and different because local brands of pasta and cheese are used), and savory vegetable dishes like pumpkin cooked down with garlic, pepper, onion, and other flavorings are some of my favorites.
A couple of years ago, I started feeling called to adopt Surrender and Acceptance as my themes for the season I was in. My natural tendency is to be super controlling and neurotic, so those ideas were appealing on a conceptual level, but they didn’t feel easy to lean into.
Yesterday was The Longest Day. It happens once a year when we come back from our trip to Tobago. We fly in to JFK, then drive back up to Albany, and no matter how wonderful the weather is or how smooth the drive, it seems to take forever.
This time, everything went nearly as well as it could have. We made it through the whole process and home sooner than we’d hoped, on a beautifully clear sunny day.
At a rest stop on the drive home, I ended up stuck in a bathroom stall with a two-year-old who was terrified of the toilet, and discovered too late I was in a stall with no toilet paper.
Remember how I was a floundering blob of anxiety for the beginning of the mindful making retreat? That didn’t completely go away.
But the temperature of the anxious energy that was burning up my insides went way down.
By the time the retreat ended late Sunday afternoon, I was exhausted from all the driving and the social interactions, and already had a vulnerability hangover, but I was so relaxed.
The best part of this is that much of what we did is stuff I do at home, but it was how we did it.
