The End Of The Road

Looking back over my posts this summer…

Man, I’ve been such a mushball.

All you need is love and family and et cetera et cetera. But honestly: that’s how it’s felt, like we’ve been existing in this little just-us bubble, and it’s exactly what we needed after a year of being separated more often than we’ve been together. I know the summer has to end – and it is ending, in just two days – and that’s OK; it’s definitely time to get home and back to reality…but I’ll miss it. I want to take a piece of it with me.

So I think I will.

The thing is, I didn’t come out here expecting to spend these ten weeks being especially happy. I expected to “get through it,” and sure, I hoped to have a little fun along the way, but I didn’t go into this thinking that it would be what it turned out to be: the best summer of my life.

And I think the reason why it was so great is that it started with a “yes.”

These past few months – years, maybe – I’ve been saying “no” too often. In my twenties, I took a lot of pride in being the girl who always said yes to everything, was always game for whatever adventure came my way, but since I’ve been a parent…I’ve kind of put that on hold. So often, it seems easier to just pass on things – turn down the dinner invitation, skip the party, stay home instead of going away – because with kids there are so many uncontrollable variables, so many things that can (and probably will) not go the way you expected. So it’s easier to just say no, and stick to what you know will work.

But this summer we said yes, even though we were scared, and it’s true: nothing turned out the way we expected.

It was better.

So that’s what I’m taking home with me at the end of it all: a promise to myself to say yes more often, to stop trying to wrestle my life down into bite-sized pieces, shapes that I can recognize. To once in awhile take a turn that I’m not entirely certain will lead us to the place where we want to end up…just because it looks like a really cool drive.