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Magic Moments
Every year, my sister and I go San Diego. The trip usually falls around my birthday. We didn't get to go last year due to Covid. She went to Tennessee this year to visit her son and his family.
My kids were over for my birthday and I mentioned (I may or may not have actually whined about it) that I didn't get to go to the beach this summer. My daughter said, "let's go." So we did.
Sometimes I feel like my kids don’t have time for me, that I’ve been left behind. My oldest daughter has two kids and one on the way. My youngest is busy running a business. Intellectually, I know it’s not true, but my mind goes to the dark places sometimes. My brain loves to tell me all of the horror stories about how older people are deserted by their children and left to die alone. So if they don't call me on the regular, I start to go there.
Kassidy, my youngest, often comments on how magical I always made things feel when she was growing up. I chuckle because I don’t really feel like I did that so much. I did want them to see life as an adventure, though, so I tried to up my game whenever I could.
So on this trip, Kassidy made plans. She wouldn’t tell me what they were though, she had some birthday surprises. One of those was ocean kayaking. We had gone years ago on a girls trip and I loved it so much. I actually almost booked a kayaking trip for us, then decided against it. Good thing! The second was a sunset tour on a private sailboat. We took a bottle of wine and just sat on the bow of the boat as we cruised and watched the sunset. It was magical. For the first time I understood what she means when she says I made everything so magical. These were simple things that didn't take too much preparation. She built up some anticipation by not telling me what we were doing and letting me be surprised as we pulled into the parking lots. Simply magical.
While we don't get to spend the day-to-day together anymore, the time that we do have is much more thoughtful and yes, magical. I’m sure there will be more times when I feel like they don’t have time for me. I'll need to manage all of the thoughts that will come my way. For now, I'm just going to bask in the fact that my daughter went out of her way to show me adventures that I wouldn’t have done for myself.