As a good Southern woman, I treasure traditions, and change can be difficult for me.
Still, the world turns, and life sometimes demands change. If last year taught me anything, it was to roll with the changes and make the most of what you have.
Our beach week this year is showing me that celebrating what you have in hand rather than dwelling on what is not makes for a happier life.
Many of our traditions of beach week are longstanding ones. We have been a party of 10-plus for more than 20 years. We eventually grew to our highest number of a party of 16. We populated several houses at Holden Beach, dividing bedrooms, sharing big dining-room tables and spacious beach spaces between the Howells and Melendys, loving on everyone’s grandchildren and marveling at the antics, still, of our adult children.
This year is different for several complicated and unusual reasons. I am sitting at my beloved Holden Beach in a lovely house and incredible beach with only six of us to enjoy the week.
Neville and I are here, and the Seattle family of four is here. It’s different, and we are celebrating what we have.
Yes, text messages and heartfelt “Missing you!” sentiments are scooting through the airways. Yes, the dinner table is less crowded. Yes, the evening card games are a bit tamer, though still plenty competitive. Yes, there are fewer water-gun fights.
But that’s OK. I am enjoying some true one-to-one time with my Seattle grandsons, who are both growing up way faster than I can keep up with. Son Brett and I are not having to search as hard for some uninterrupted conversation time. Daughter-in-law Olivia and I are not only getting some good Girl Time in, but also hoping to get some work done, as she is helping me greatly with the graphics and optics for my new travel-agency business.
When I learned of all the changes coming for this year, I anticipated a twinge of depression, especially with the juxtaposition of a year of great change happening in a place that seems blessedly changeless to me. What I am finding, however, is that the unchanging roll of the tides, the constant whisper of the wind and the slow, easy pace of island time is comforting.
My mind drifts back to my mom, sitting on the carport, shelling peas with my aunts and grandmother while watching her children, nieces and nephews ride bikes and catch lightning bugs in the field across the street.
She would smile as Papaw cut a watermelon, bringing all to the carport for a summer treat. Just a simple summer night in a small town.
“God’s in His heaven and all’s right in the world,” she would say.
And for that moment, that would be true and that was a blessing to be celebrated.
Did I hope for these changes? Not in a million years. Is this year a memory-maker to be cherished forever?
Yes. And that is a blessing to be celebrated.
Sherri Gardner Howell has been writing about family life for newspapers and magazines since 1987. She lives in West Knoxville, is married to Neville Howell and has two sons and three grandsons.