By Sally Torbey
About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the ...
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About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the challenges of having a satisfying family life in a community where parents set a high bar for themselves, their children, and the schools and organizations that educate and socialize them. I grew up in the Midwest, attended a small liberal arts college on the East Coast and graduated from medical school in Chicago. I left a pediatric residency to care for our then infant son and spent the next dozen years contentedly gestating and lactating while having four more children. My husband grew up in the Middle East, came to the US for graduate school and works in high tech. Our eldest son graduated from a UC, and after working in the Middle East for a few years, now attends law school in NYC. Our eldest daughter graduated from a Midwestern Big Ten University and is a journalist in Texas. Our middle child studies engineering at a UC. The youngest two girls are in middle and high school in PAUSD. We are celebrating 20 years as PAUSD parents! I volunteer in the public schools, our church, and scouting.
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We spent the first few days of our Hawaiian vacation ridding our rental home of occupants of the creepy-crawly kind. The first night I came within inches of stepping barefoot on a four-inch centipede in the bathroom. Then there were the numerous cockroaches residing in the shower. On our second morning, while we munched breakfast cereal, we were joined by two mice racing frantically around the kitchen, although watching our six-foot three-inch son escape the mice by catapulting himself up onto the counter provided some comic relief.
While the vacation home rental company was more blasé about these unregistered guests that we would have hoped, after a day or two we were left sharing our home with only friendly little neon-green lizards, although we did continue to vigilantly scan the baseboards for other visitors and step gingerly.
We greatly enjoyed our daily visits with the rest of the island's wildlife on snorkeling excursions. I love placing my masked face into the ocean and being instantly transported to a vast undersea world. Floating above the reef, watching fish of all sizes, shapes, and colors nibble on coral and dart about defending their turf, or just float rhythmically in the surge of the waves, is transformative. Encountering sea turtles while snorkeling is particularly exciting, they appear to soar effortlessly through the water, flapping wing-like flippers in slow motion.
Like the expansive ocean, the sunsets in Hawaii make the sky seem like a vast dome painting. We were treated to breathtaking sunsets that lasted for hours, starting with the orange glow streaking through the blue sky as the sun approached the horizon and slips below, and ending with deep purple and bright pink clouds reflecting the light in the east.
I find the warm water, trade wind breezes, gorgeous scenery, and an abundance of fascinating ocean creatures all very restorative. I love being a seemingly invisible but privileged observer to their beautiful world. It was worth putting up with a few unwanted house guests!