An Enchantment of Mind (part 3 of 3)

The storm raged on and we were inevitably sent to bed before we could see the fate of our beloved ships. The next morning I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling until my fuzzy brain remembered where I was and what I was supposed to do today. As soon as my mind's eye read through my chore list of villains and heroes I remembered! "The Queen Mary", I shouted. "Angela, wake up! Get up"! She jumped out of bed and we grabbed each other's hand and ran down the stairs of this old house and onto the porch. Our eyes glued to the window, we couldn't see anything. I looked far up and down the St. John River but nothing. Angela looked and looked and we spoke with frantic voices of worry. When we couldn't be satisfied looking out through a window we ran out of the house, down a long flight of stairs that ran alongside, stopped at the two-lane highway to check for cars and then onto the beach. When we got down to the shoreline all we could see were a couple of broken planks washed upon the sand. We were devastated. Angela and I sat for an hour or so, trying to think of anything that we could have done the night before to save our fair ship but our raft was demolished and nothing we said nor were there any promises we made to each other would have saved her.

We tried to make a day out of it anyway but there was just this bit of sadness that loomed over us. The next day our parents arrived to take us home. It had been a month already but it seemed like an eternity and many lifetimes spent as characters real and make believe of anyone we wanted to be with everything we could ever want at our fingertips with the help of our imaginations. Now, that was the best vacation I have ever spent anywhere, EVER! I was a child with no responsibilities, no parents, no bombardment of rules and etiquette. There was just acres of land with fields of flowers, tall majestic trees, sandy beaches and river that stretched far beyond my sight and me; just me. Free to be everything and anything I ever wanted to be in this world and in the whole wide universe. Now that's a vacation I would love to live over and over again but I guess I'll just have to settle for closing my eyes and reliving the wonderful sights, sounds and feelings of that summer and smile because I got to experience it at all and I get to treasure that forever.