Summer is prime time for travel and judging by Facebook postings, many of us have taken trips in recent weeks. Our family did a cross country drive that took us to New York, through Canada, and up into Michigan to introduce our new grandchild to our extended families.
Although the interruption in our normal schedule can be challenging, it can be a good time for us to jar ourselves out of long-worn ruts and remember who we were when we were not weighed down by our day-to-day responsibilities.
While holding my granddaughter and watching her gleeful response to seeing Niagara Falls for the first time, I was struck by the beauty of the collage of places and things that make up our lives. For much of my young life, I saw the Falls regularly. I had picnics along the Niagara River. I remember when the Army Corp of Engineers turned off the American side for a time. I remember my step-brother showing me all the best places that only locals knew. I imagine some day my ashes will be scattered there. I remember thinking of this place as home before I came to call Aurora home.
We visited a lot of family members on this trip and it was stunning to see how time has passed and relationships have changed. In what seemed like no time at all, nieces and nephews were grown and going off to college. Siblings who fought as children can reminisce and laugh about the childhood they shared. Babies are introduced; weddings are announced; anniversaries celebrated; and passings are mourned. There is nothing like dipping one’s foot into the ever-flowing stream of time, as marked within a family, to jar a person out of the tunnel vision that daily life can create. Realizing that roles have changed, people have changed, and time is finite in this life, makes one wish to use that time better.
The day we came home, my husband and I fell into a conversation that felt like I had stumbled back into the deep rut that I had slowly climbed out of over the previous two weeks. I stopped us and said, “No! Let’s re-start this and try again.” I don’t want to get caught up in details that don’t matter. I don’t want to argue about the correct way to mow the lawn. I don’t want to feel so overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, that I can’t finish any of them.
Unfortunately, I know that I can’t put everything into better order all at once, so here is my plan: Choose one project at a time and finish it. Let my husband choose his own projects and do them any way he pleases. Forget about anything that I no longer can change and find something each day that makes me happy, then take a moment to feel grateful that it is in my life.
I realized on this trip that when we are gone, the only thing left of consequence are the stories. Our children will be the curators of what our great-grandchildren know of our lives. It won’t matter how perfectly tidy our house or yard were. It won’t even matter whether we achieved every single goal we ever set out to accomplish.
It will matter that we were kind and others could see joy in us. It will matter that we spent time with the individuals we love.