We’re home.

This week we finally had a day when we could go for a stroll on the beach, and just chill. It’s been a hectic past few months – April was driving out to Halifax and quarantining and moving our son out of university residence and into his new apartment and visiting Lunenburg to see in person the new house we’d purchased via video link, and May was driving back to Toronto and getting our 1st COVID shots and getting organized to move and sweating the sale of our place there, and June was packing and driving and quarantining and unpacking in Lunenburg, and the first few weeks of July have been getting the car re-registered to Nova Scotia and getting our drivers’ licences and health cards and sorting things out in the house and cleaning and putting things away and driving to Bridgewater 847 times to pick up this and that and going to Halifax to get some furniture and putting that furniture together and organizing our books and getting to know some people in town and getting our 2nd COVID shots and then finally, this week, just looking outside and saying let’s go to the beach.

And it was wonderful. It was Hirtle Beach of course, our favourite and probably the chief reason we’re here at all. Slipping off sandals and splashing through chilly North Atlantic water, gazing at familiar sights and listening to the breeze and gurgle of waves, watching families braving the waters and young couples huddled on the sand. We’ve walked this beach a dozen times or more, and yet today was like our first walk.

In the parking lot near the beach, I turned to Ann and said hey look, Ontario plates on that car – that used to be us.

We’ve had a few moments over the past few weeks when we’ve said to ourselves, we’re here. Our first meal in our new house. Our first night out in Lunenburg. But now that we’ve had our first stroll on the beach, and now we really know that we’re here.

Time to get walking.