So today is the last full day here until who knows when again. Hopefully April but right now I’m not banking on that given the current situation at our time share, but we’ll see what happens. It’s been been a bittersweet trip, for me anyway. We got to spend time with old friends which is always a good thing and got to meet many more people this trip than I expected, and best of all, we got to meet people I’d hoped to come to know and at the very least, to be able to associate a face to a name.

The trip itself was good but a hard one. So many ‘blue roofs’ and so many places we’d come to love are gone. We drove around early in our trip and found it heartbreaking to see the damage and destruction everywhere. The first ride took us as far as Marigot and then on to P’berg, and it really wrenches your gut to see what so many suffered. And yet, we know, the St. Martiners from both sides of the island are a strong and stalwart people, and just like Gloria Gaynor, THEY WILL SURVIVE. And they have and they are. And just like after Luis, a few years from now, that b itch Irma will be but a terrible memory and but a scar on an otherwise wonderful island I’ve come to love over so very many years, or at least, that’s my hope.

So now to real things - like getting all those unworn clothes that I so neatly washed, pressed, folded and packed to bring down here back into those big black bags, still pressed and folded while asking myself, “Why did I ever think I might need all this stuff?” when I could have packed in a carry-on and a knapsack. With room left over.

And so it begins.....the journey home tomorrow with yet more firsts. Our first departure under the current SXM airport situation; our first time using connecting flights home in probably thirty years; and our first time connecting and clearing through CLT. I’m already dreading the walk from international arrivals to the regional airport gates since coming down, for a while there I thought we were walking all the way to St. Maarten! But it will be nice to realize when we deplane at HPN we only have to clear baggage claim and we’re a half hour from home.