Sunset Beach

There is a bit of work involved in taking two young children on vacation for two weeks. Sleeping in one room is not easy, especially when your one year-old likes to wake everyone up. Getting them off of the beach and showered multiple times a day is tiring, and watching them on the beach all day when they are running in two different directions is not exactly relaxing. But those are not the things I want to remember about this year at Sunset Beach. 

What I do want to remember is this:

Popsicles on the deck with cousins

Stella's fearlessness around the ocean (and in the sand, on the steps, climbing the couch, and anywhere and everywhere)

Lots of time playing on the beach with cousins

Foard and Elk in their matching Volcom shirts

And spending time with Elk in general.

Also, my mom's joy in getting to spend time with all three of her grandchildren:

And our many, many sand castles:

We carried on the tradition of walking to the pier every night to get ice cream. Foard usually chose strawberry because red is his favorite color, but sometimes he chose "poconut". Stella walked on the hottest sand up by the dunes saying "hot, hot, hot" but not thinking to move. They are wild and rascally, but they loved being around the family and they settled right into the Sunset Beach routine.

When we moved to the coast I thought our Sunset Beach trip might lose some its luster, since we go to beaches all the time. It has not. It's not about being in a house on the beach, it's about being with family in the same house we've been sharing for 34 years. It's about watching my children play with their cousins on the same little spot of beach I played on with my cousins when we were little. It's about sitting on the deck strumming guitars and singing, and no matter how many directions we go in during the day (riding bikes, kayaking, yoga, surfing, skimmer boarding, Seafood Hutting) every single night we all sit down to dinner together.

Very little about Sunset Beach has changed in 34 years. There's a new bridge and a few more houses, but the island still feels quiet and safe. There are some new businesses, and some have gone. We have lost some people on the trip and gained some others, and some people leave for a few years and then come back. It is still a magical place where we can walk down the beach at night singing songs about the moon, chasing crabs, and searching for the triangular windows that let us know that we are almost home.

I am sad every year when I leave Sunset Beach. Always I think about how nice it was to be tucked in our beach house with my most loved ones for a week or two, and always I think about how things inevitably change for both the good and bad. The dunes shift, new houses are built. Children grow up and grown-ups grow old. I really hope that the sun never sets on our annual family Sunset Beach trip. My children are just beginning to be old enough to understand its magic.