Stress. Free.

I’m sitting on the second floor balcony.

It’s one of those big deep summer porches, at our niece’s and nephew’s getaway house on Tybee Island. It’s a beautiful day, without a cloud in the sky, and a light breeze is blowing, just breezy enough to whisper memories.  

This is a time for long walks and short naps, rambling conversations and trashy novels. What is it about a beach town? Time stands still in the best way. And 70’s folk rock is always playing quietly in the background. What time is it? What day is it? 

Don’t know. Don’t care.

I’m thinking of beach days in the past and present, when you realize you’re sitting in a moment and no one knows where you are or what you’re doing or what you’re thinking or if you’re thinking at all. And it’s fine and it’s exactly what you’ve been hoping for and it’s exactly what you’ve needed.

A  moment to be care free and erased and totally present, where you hear the lack of sound and you see the colors of the air and you sense the enveloping calm around you and you feel the deep breath you apparently took without being aware of it. 

And just like that, this beginning-of-summer day becomes the same day twenty years ago...and thirty...and forty...and they are all the same but different. 

And I am the same...but different.

I’m sitting on the second floor balcony, alone with my thoughts, surrounded by love, hugged by the breeze...  

“I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days.”

–Henry David Thoreau