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The Other Truth (A snippet)
For me, especially when it comes to kids, there exists something I call “The other truth”. Mind you – this isn’t a lie – it is just the “other” truth. Actually - vacations seem to mean different things to different people. Kids enjoy vacations and experience them to the hilt and are actually on a perpetual vacation during their youth. Destinations only enhanced their moments. Adults, on the other hand, tend to enter the vacation experience as something “we need”. In here lies a big difference. More mature adults, the ones with greyer hair, also see things differently. They often see their vacations as a time to remember and recall memories of things gone by. There you have it: The open abandonment of experiences, the need and the recollections. Kind of sums it up in a nutshell.
This small boy was walking with an elderly lady in the beach area in between La Cabana and Costa Linda. They were walking and talking and as I later found out, she was just a new friend that told him she was the grandmother of a boy similar to him. “Gams” is what she told him her name was and it is what he called her. All of a sudden ( as they walked) the boy and the lady both raised their hands in the air and she lowered them and gave the boy a hug and pointed to us and the young boy came running back to tell his Dad he was hungry. Almost as a throw-away-question, the father asked his son what he was talking to the lady about and received one of those “other truths” I alluded to earlier. This was his answer.
“She (Gams) told me that her husband has gone to heaven a few years ago and before he did, they came to Aruba every year and walked on the beaches every morning and in the afternoons. She told me that they talked a lot and that they would try to find their feet in the sand when they went back to where they started walking from.” Since they (according to this jewel of a kid) did so much walking on the beaches, he told us that he asked “Gams” if the waves wash away the foot prints if you come to Aruba a lot and she told me that she was actually looking for the feet in the sand now. He then asked her if he could help look and she said OK. Finally he found some big feet and asked her if those were them and she said “HEY – you found them!” The little guy looked at his dad and said - “Isn’t that nice Dad?” He said it was and asked what happened when they found the feet in the sand and the boy said – “ Gams said that we have to let him go back to heaven and we need to raise our hands in the air real high and say “I love you”.
The father thought about it for a second and asked if he said it. The little guy said “Sure”. He then asked his father if he could back tomorrow and look again. The father said it would be OK and that his Mom and sister would help him. I thought about this and came to the conclusion that there is no reason in spoiling the “other truth” Why erase the memories in the sand? Seemed like a good family thing to do if you ask me.
For that instant, all three elements were in place - the experiences, the need to vacation and the recollections. It kind of sums up that particular vacation moment on Aruba in a nutshell. It happens here often and equally as often, we miss these little jewels. These moments are forever yet are often lost.
I only wish that I could relay to you how much I love living here and seeing the good it does to so many people.
charles
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