Well, Hurricane Erin has come and gone. Or, rather, it’s gone and it was never really here to begin with.
I’m not unhappy about that at all. Sometimes, anticlimactic is good.
It’s my first hurricane season as an official resident of Virginia Beach, and though I’m not too worried generally, I admit I was concerned about and disconcerted by all the watches and warnings that accompanied Erin’s not-landfall here. As a lifelong mountain critter – if not in body than certainly in spirit – I find the ocean intimidating. Coastal storms were something that, growing up, we actually talked about pretty often. You know, as in: “Gee, sure glad and grateful we aren’t dealing with that.”
And now here I am, living very close to the big water, right on the coast. It’s a funny old life.
At any rate, I am quite grateful that the most we saw of Erin in our neck of the woods – er, our stretch of the sand – was just a little bit of a breeze, some higher than usual high tides, and rough waves.
The surfers had a great time. Waves in Virginia Beach are normally pretty calm, so these were fun to watch. From a distance.
I know the Outer Banks in North Carolina dealt with more, and I’ve heard Norfolk had some flooding. But as storms go, we got lucky. And I’m hoping we stay lucky through this season. Because as much as I love new experiences, I definitely don’t have “See a hurricane up close and personal” on my 2025 bingo card.
It’s my birthday today. I’m thirty-nine. It’s the oldest I’ve ever been, and the youngest I’ll ever be again. I’m grateful for it. A lot of people don’t get to see this number. I’m also feeling a little melancholy, as I often do on birthdays.
My in-laws sent me a sweet message this morning with some pictures that they’ve collected through the years. Here’s Graham and me, for our engagement announcement, all the way back in 2013.
And even farther, here’s me and my parents, on the day I graduated from high school. In 2004.
Both of my grandmothers are standing behind us. They’ve been gone for years. I love their faces.
Here’s me, with Graham and Lucy, just Friday, at a fairy party. (I was a blue fairy. Lucy found a bottle of sunscreen, and liked it much better than the pink magic wand she was given to match her outfit. Kids.)
Time really does fly. Yesterday, I was eighteen, and today I’m thirty-nine. I mean, not really. But it feels that way. They’re so good, and they’ve been so happy, but where do the years go?
I spent a lot of time when Annie was just a puppy wishing for the day when things would get a little easier. As I wiped up messes and covered up chew spots and hid shoes away, I’d think – eventually, one day, this won’t be so hard. And it did get easier, as it sometimes does. But when I look back now, I realize that all I was doing was wishing away precious days of Annie’s life.
And that’s quite a realization.
We’re all told that life is short, that you should value your time and not waste it and you should treat it as the limited resource that it is. I’ve said as much to myself, and to friends and to family and to random people at trivia night after I’ve had a few beers. I just don’t think it really hit me until now. And that’s living on thirty-nine time.
I look at Lucy’s face, changing every day, and wonder how I could ever wish this time away. And yet I do. I sit and wonder when she’ll sleep through the night (so far, not at all), when she’ll be able to tell me what’s wrong instead of just crying in my face, when she’ll understand the word no and stop biting me on the arm, when things will get just a little more easy. I don’t think of it as wishing away days of her life – and that’s definitely not what I’m consciously doing – but that’s what it is.
Thirty-nine time.
The days go slow. The years go fast. And one day, if I’m so lucky and so blessed, I’ll be sixty-nine, and seventy-nine, maybe even eighty-nine. And I’ll look back on the hard days and remember them not because they were hard, but because they were beautiful.
I’m no wiser than anyone else. And I’m not the first person to wax poetic about the fleeting and finite nature of our lives. I’m just here, with a little girl, on my birthday, truly feeling it for the for the first time, trying my best to be mindful, trying my best to make sure her days are good and happy. Trying my best to just enjoy every moment, even the hard ones.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 