When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing – just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park? – Ralph Marston

This summer has not been exactly what I was hoping for.  My plan included horseback riding with Julia, writing at the coffee shop, and yoga at the beautiful blue studio.  The studio is a room you expect will break into song any minute: a Minuet, a Waltz, it’s hard to tell, but the gilded moldings make one want to dance.

I saw myself writing at the coffee shop of summer’s past, sun streaming in the windows as groups stopped by.  Would I observing the coffee clash gather to discuss the latest local happenings, or the Christmas planning group diligently working on fundraising?  Would this be the summer that I would get my outline and lists of scribbled snippets in order?

The reality of this summer has been a bit different.  There have been early morning teleconferences, late night web cams, and red eye flights.  I sadly realize I have spent more than a week in flight since the solstice.

I find myself day dreaming of where I could go with all those accrued miles: a sparsely populated island with strips of white sand beach.  Bora Bora, Tahiti?  Why not go to the Maldives instead of watching the Bachelorette try to find love there?

I want to mourn the loss of what could have been.  I’m tired of telling myself next season or next year.  When months become years, it can start to feel like never.

Part of me knows it is in my control.   I do choose the projects I take on, but saying no is difficult.  I naturally default to yes, and future projections illustrate the long way to retirement and college savings readiness.  I don’t want to say to my children we can’t afford it, when I could do more now.  However, saying yes to work, often means saying no to myself, and to my family.

Perhaps the truth is about stolen moments: sipping iced tea during a mid-morning break, glorying in the golden light of afternoon, or a quick stroll through the garden at dusk, trailing fingers across blooms.

Thinking this way, I recognize there have been moments of peace and wonder:

• Quietly contemplating the fish that teem near the docks, interweaving one another
• Gazing at the shores from the boat deck, as the kids wonder just how fast we will go
• Singing on our anniversary under concert lights, smiling so much my face hurts
• Julia pushing off on her new bike, training wheels in a heap on the side of the driveway

One wheel still spins, before it comes to a stop.  In 10 short years, it will be a car, rather than a bike.

Maybe making time for the small moments is enough.  I decide it must be; if I’m being truthful, I’m not brave enough for a true life overhaul.  Still, I feel I am going in circles; I must have written the very same post last year.  I wonder if I have really learned anything at all.

I have forgotten a favorite piece of advice.  On our honeymoon, we stayed in a small Kauai inn, where you dipped in the hot tub looking out over the valley, then settled down into a cocoon of white down bedding, and awakened to roosters crowing.  Here, in this place of joy and relaxation, was Marjorie, a priestess among proprietors.  Her motto was: ‘Do more than one thing a day.’

• We arose to fluffy muffins, hiked a canyon to dizzying lookouts, and descended to a treat of rainbow snow cones topped with macadamia nut ice cream.
• The next day we drove to storied Hanalei bay, boated along the Napali cliffs, amazed by their impossible heights, and enjoyed mint mojitos at a historic plantation house, set among a garden of palms.

Doing more than fun thing a day was easy on vacation.  Hawaii seemed made for such pleasures.  The trick was living like this every day.

This month I spent hours discussing clinical trials and treatment options with metastatic cancer patients.  I listened to their stories and strength; they had struggled in terrible and unimaginable ways, yet, they lived through it all.

One woman lucky enough to be in remission spoke of saying yes to meeting with friends more often, and signing up for a class for a new hobby that she always wanted to try.   It made me wonder: do we need to be dying to learn how to live?

As for man, his days are like grass;

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more. – Psalm 103

I don’t want to be like grass in the parched sun of August.  I decide to put more than one fun thing a day back into practice.  At lunch, we leave our computers, and rent paddle boards.  We push out on wobbly knees, tentatively rising to greet a face full of wind.  Paddling along, we observe a father osprey squawking, a warning not to come too close to the nest.  Across the way a family of deer startle, leaping past fuchsia crepe myrtle.   Round the creek bend, a stray fox darts across the field, a shot of red fur and jaunty step.

Later in the week, we wake at dawn to start work before the kids’ camp.  In this way, we end at 4pm and enjoy our Foxy’s at 4 tradition: cool margarita’s and crab heaped chips on the harbor docks.  We catch-up on the week, wondering what can be done about Michael’s naps, or the virus on the hydrangea bushes.  Eventually the sun and the water’s stillness lulls us into a kind of silence: save these cares for another day.  Life’s moments are there for the taking.

Another day we take off, and do nothing at all, floating around the pool in the afternoon heat.

A wise bear once said, ‘Doing nothing often leads to the very best kind of something.’

In these last days of summer, I’d like to see what that something could be.