“CHRISTMAS” IN ANTIGUA
It was an early alarm. My wife likes it loud, and loud it was. The clanging clanged my nerves. I was suddenly wide awake and, looking out my bedroom window, I noticed that a soft snow was falling. Icicles had formed on each window pane and the pre-dawn view was bleak. Gray on gray with gray trim. None of it mattered. This was the alarm that we had been looking forward to since Christmas when we told our four teenage boys that we were taking them to the Caribbean for a week’s sailing. It was going to be a new tradition for our family. In the future, the Christmas gifts would be traveling to some place special, and a week in Antigua on a Moorings charter yacht would be special by any measure.
The road to the airport was not too bad. Snow plows had been out early, and they had salted and sanded things allowing us to make our plane with plenty of time to spare. The boys, who were usually dragging and barely coherent at that time of day, were bright-eyed and wide awake. My wife, Sally, shot me a look that said, “If only it was always like this.” After a lengthy de-icing we finally took off into a pale morning sky: Antigua bound. This was our first trip away since Sally and I had tied the knot last summer and formally blended our family into a unit which we lovingly refer to
