Show Up Fully

I wrote this short post in a coffee shop last week as I vacationed with my family in Northern California.

Today I will experience my last full day of vacation with my husband and daughters. It’s not often that we are all together these days—without papers to write, or texts and emails to answer. It’s not often that we are all contained in a way that life cannot separate us.

Today, just for one more day, we will share three meals together. We will linger over insights and dreams and marvel at the beauty around us. We will be together, as a family, for just one more day.

That is why today my intention is the Show Up Fully, to breathe in the air and to listen to the stories. Today I have only one goal—to be present for each moment. Today, I will pay attention as we get on our bikes and cruise down the coast from Monterey to Asilomar Beach, as we stop from time to time to watch the seals lay on the rocks, or to take in the glorious sound of the thundering waves. Today, I will show up as we take yet another picture of the rocks and the water, and of each other on the rock and by the water.

Show up for this last full day of vacation, as this too shall soon be a distant memory. How could I possibly care about being somewhere else when where I am is pretty darn incredible?

This wonderful day will very soon be a cherished memory. Can I let go of my life back home and just be? Can I meet this day whole-heartedly, with arms wide open, and allow myself to curl into its embrace?

Show up fully, I remind myself. For in a blink of an eye your girls will leave for their summer adventures and then they’ll be back at school for the fall semester. Before I realize it, they’ll be graduated and entrenched in their new lives somewhere, on vacation with their own children, creating memories of their own.

In a blink of an eye it’s over—so show up fully.