These Are the Good Ole’ Days
There was a moment yesterday when we were sitting in our chairs on the beach and our kids were running through the surf laughing and playing together that I thought, these are the good ole days people talk about years down the road when the reminisce. We’re actually living through them right this very instant.
The funny thing about the good old days is that most of the time, you don’t realize you’re in them until they’re already gone. But yesterday, watching the kids run in and out of the water, their hair salty and their laughter carrying down the shoreline, I had this sudden, urgent awareness that this is it. This is the part of life we’ll talk about later.
We’re down here at our little beach shack this week, and lately it’s started to feel less like a getaway and more like a second home. Over the past couple of years we’ve come so often that we’ve begun to learn our life here. We know which local grocery store has the good produce and the best wine selection. We know where to pop in if someone suddenly needs a pair of flip flops or a sweatshirt when the wind picks up at night. We know the donut shop we go to when we want a local treat, the one where the service is a lot quicker if you go inside and skip the line outside.
Our days here are slower in a way that’s hard to replicate anywhere else. The clock loosens its grip a little. Bedtimes slide and screen time rules do too. Sometimes we realize it’s three in the afternoon and no one has asked what time it is all day.
Thankfully, our jobs give us the kind of flexibility that lets us do this, and our kids are still young enough that they want to come along for the ride. They pile into the car for the drive down like it’s an adventure every time, even though we’ve done it so many times now the route feels second nature. I know that won’t last forever, which is maybe why these days feel even sweeter.
Also, and this can’t be overstated enough: the beach has a magical effect on our kids. It’s the one place where all three of them fall into easy rhythm with each other. They don’t bicker the way they sometimes do at home. Instead, they run together, dig in the sand together, invent games together, and lose track of time in that way kids do when they’re fully inside a day. It’s glorious.
And while they do that, PJ and I sit back in our chairs, watching them, talking about life the way we always have for the last 16 years. We’re dreaming, planning, tossing around ideas for the beach shack, thinking about what we might fix next or how we might make it a little better, or if we want to invest in something else entirely down here. It feels like we’re constantly building something. Not just the house, but the life around it.
I have a feeling that years from now we’ll look back at this chapter and see it clearly. We’ll remember being young enough to make the drive without thinking twice. Young enough to run into the waves with the kids, to carry sandy towels back to the house, to spend weekends fixing things and imagining what could come next.
And we’ll say to each other, those were the good old days.
The only difference is, right now we know it.