Peace, Kindness and Generosity

This past weekend, my sweet husband and I took our brood down to the peace and quiet that is my in-laws’ house.  They are preparing to move in a few weeks and we jumped at the opportunity to spend a weekend in the aura of my mother in law’s calm.  We also realized that it might be our last chance to spend time in the house we both have come to think of as home.

There is so much history for us in that comfortable house in Corpus Christi.  It’s where the love of my life brought me to meet his family and they wondered at the wild child he had dragged home.  It’s where he told them that he was actually planning to marry me and was met by stunned disbelief and objections which have changed to joyous affection over the years.  It is the only place of permanence in my wandering life.  But it’s just a house and ever more precious are the people who live there.

My mother in law is the kind and gentle voice to her children that I hope someday to be.  She worries and frets and they tease her about being paranoid, but they have never doubted the love that she has for them for even a moment.  My father in law is the silent bedrock of his family.  Stoic and stern on the surface, his gaze softens and the corners of his mouth twitch with affection when one of my small ones goes tearing through the room.  They are, for my children, the definition of unwavering and unconditional love.

We also went, I admit it, to go to the beach.

I love the beach.  The smells and sound of it wash the tension from my shoulders and the worries from my mind.  I can leave my burdens in the car and just be a carefree girl running and playing on the sand, dancing in the waves.  My husband, who lately has been too busy to play, taught the little kids to jump through the waves and the older kids to body surf.  It was the perfect antidote to the stresses of the last week and the rest we hadn’t even realized we needed.

It was also a weekend full of the kindness of strangers.  From the guy at the tire store who bought my father in law a coke (because he had no change on him) and refused to be repaid to the guys who dug our car out of the sand at the beach when we got stuck, the unlikeliest looking help and kindness showed up and smiled at us and offered whatever we needed and accepted no thanks.  For a couple of adults in sore need of reassurance about the basic kindness of humanity, it was exactly what we didn’t even know we were looking for.