Summer, Sand, Time

I hit a big milestone birthday in May which coincided with a beach vacation. My sister, niece and I went for an amazing week to the Emerald Coast in Florida. That trip was so many things for me! My sister had just bought a new SUV and since it’s about an eight-hour drive, we did a road trip rather than deal with the expense and hassle of flying.

We had so much fun on the drive to Florida, we laughed and caught up with each other, talked about our respective jobs and enjoyed the scenery. Just after getting back on the road from lunch, we suddenly got caught in a huge traffic snarl from an accident just a bit ahead of us and sat on the freeway for an hour before a LifeFlight helicopter landed a quarter mile in front of us to transport injured people to the hospital. After the accident cleared and we got going again we talked about how, if we had left the restaurant just a few minutes earlier, we might have been involved in that accident, instead of just being delayed by it. One of those what-if moments, sliding door metaphors.

Getting closer to our Destin destination (see what I did there?), the bodies of water we saw became ever clearer in beautiful shades of blue and green. We have spent most of our lives on the Texas Gulf Coast, where the closest beach was Galveston. I don’t want to offend anyone who loves Galveston, but gorgeous beaches are not the prime attraction, so the three of us went all FanGirl over that blue Florida water and white sand. VERY different than what we are used to in a beach! I even had the thought, “oh, this is why people love a beach. I think I get it now. This is flat-out gorgeous”.

Checked into our gorgeous beachfront condo, unloaded the car and got onto the beach just in time to catch our first sunset. The next morning, and every morning that week, my sister and I got up early to go for a walk on the beach. The property staff put out beach chairs and umbrellas every morning for the day (fancy!), so when we came back from our walk we could just plop down into a chair and have a sit. A Beach Sit.

There is really nothing like sitting on a beach to relax. Sometimes, however, for the overly introspective brain like mine, that relaxation can segue into thinking deeply about your life. For me, that can be a good thing if I can focus on being quiet and trying to gain some clarity when I have decisions to make. Life is full of next steps and chapters, big and little choices that can change your direction. Lots of those metaphorical sliding doors. However, that introspection flow can also devolve into regret over past actions and decisions that now feel like mistakes.

We’re told that even the mistakes are a necessary part of our journey to becoming who we are, but geez, sometimes those mistakes are painful and - for me at least - the regret can go beyond “learning opportunities”. It’s hard not to go down the rabbit hole of each one and obsess over what I would do differently. I’m getting slightly better at catching myself when this happens, hauling myself up out of the rabbit hole and just letting go of regret. But only slightly.

I took a lot of pretty pictures on this trip, but one of my favorites is this one:

I’m not very good at identifying birds or waterfowl - I think maybe these were sandpipers, but they were tiny. At any rate, I loved watching them traipse and scavenge each morning, imprinting the fresh white sand with their tiny footprints, just moving ahead and doing their thing. Those little creatures don’t sit around thinking and getting too deep in their own thoughts over past decisions and what direction to take next. They just move and look for something to eat, just survive. For them, time is meaningless. We, on the other hand, can’t help ourselves. We think about life and the passage of time, regret over some decisions, and hope for the future. As I get older, I’m truly alarmed at how fast time is going by. You all know the feeling: when we were kids, it felt like it took forever for our favorite holidays to roll around and now it feels like time is a speeding freight train. It will be August in a week, but it feels like Christmas was just a few weeks ago! The sands of time are pouring faster through the hourglass, however much I want it to slow down.

Knowing that we were going to visit several beach communities along the coast, my sister had the foresight to order little glass vials and labels to bring on our trip so we could collect a little sand from each beach as a memento. All of the beaches were pretty, and I love seeing the slight shade variances in each. I keep mine on my nightstand or my desk to remind myself of that fun trip with two of my favorite people, and as a reminder that time is fleeting. I’m trying harder to enjoy each day, even the icky, stressful or boring parts. Good memories and hopeful feelings about the future - I’m here for it.

Here’s hoping that your summer is going swimmingly and that you are finding that elusive balance of busy and lazy!

Love, Bonnie