The Brewster Bulletin: Our PEI Reprieve

This summer we took our family trip to PEI.

We decided on some place simple that didn’t involve a prolonged flight or significant time change. What we wanted was a real chance to relax. What we needed was some time to just simply be together as a family.

The build up to these short 8 days has been immense. While all of the chaos of house buying, year ending, moving, summer planning and nanny hiring went on around us, we went to the mere prospect of this trip as our happy place.

Two weeks - we’d remind ourselves. Two weeks and we will step away from this all and just be.

Whenever I found myself anxious or stressed at work I would advance my day planner ahead a few weeks to the yellow blocked out weeks of our vacation and take a deep breath.

Soon.

And now here we are.

As it often is at life, when we place all of our expectations into one singular outcome, the results are often disappointing. As we launched off into the air in our small Air Canada Express airplane I prepared myself for this. I said a silent reminder to myself to accept whatever the PEI trip and experience became for what it was. But I also hoped with all my might that it would offer us the reprieve we so badly needed.

I sit here tonight on the deck of our modest cottage, sipping a glass of red wine, breathing deeply the salty sea air and I am moved to write.

PEI has not disappointed. It has not only granted me the serenity I imagined, but it has unearthed in all of us an innate sense of belonging and recognition we didn’t even know existed.

It is majestic in its simplistic and rugged beauty. The lifestyle is simple. The people are kind. The food is fresh. The land is uncrowded and the houses unpretentious. The music is joyous, and the air…you can smell the wholesomeness of the sea salt as easily as you can see its crazy effects on my curly hair.

At first I just imagined this to by my happy place, but soon realized that the feeling was mutual. This omnipresent contentment was solidified on a drive out to Malpeque Bay earlier this week. We were driving in silence with all the windows open and the cool air blowing our thoughts around in our heads when Toby’s singular statement summarized perfectly what we were all thinking.

“I like it here…” he said to all of us and none of us at the same time, “It’s even better than Disney world.”

I pressed him a bit on this out of curiosity. WHAT exactly was better? We had no organized day trips – just lounging days at the beach. There weren’t any fancy restaurants – just last minute jaunts to the fish market or the lobster suppers we attended. We hardly watched TV but opted for late night swims or one of the millions of board games that were at the cottage. (My kids even learned how to play twister!)

“Well…” my 6 year old tried to put to words exactly what I had been thinking all week, “There’s nothing I can think of…you just don’t have to be DOING anything here to have fun. It just is."

Tonight when I tucked him into bed I asked him what he loved most about the trip. His answer was one long run on sentence. I concluded with a question about what he most looked forward to about going home.

He stared at me blankly.

“I just kind of wish we lived here” was all he came up with.

Ironically, this is the very same conversation Rob and I had had the night before.

I reminded Toby of the million and one things we love about Collingwood, family, and friends back home and it wasn’t long before he was imagining play dates and anticipating how he was going to summarize his trip for his grandparents.

There’s something about this land that sneaks into your soul. Or maybe it has been hidden inside of us this whole time. Either way, I know we are all coming back from our excursion a little more connected in a way none of us can put into words. We are also a little blonder, a little browner, a little quieter and a little calmer. And a little more inspired to translate the quiet peacefulness of vacation and PEI life into our own life when we return.