There’s something about the last weekend of summer that always makes me want to hold on just a little tighter. Maybe it’s knowing that the days are already getting shorter. The evenings are already getting cooler. Schedules have started to fill back up, routines will settle in, and before we know it, summer will feel like something that happened a long time ago.

But this summer felt different. Maybe because, in so many ways, it was.

We spent more time on the water than I ever imagined we would. There were mornings catching the sunrise at the marina, long days under the sun, dinners on the dock, and evenings when the sky seemed to put on a show just for us. We waited all day long for sunset!

From the outside looking in, I know it probably looked like the dreamiest summer. And parts of it really were.

But life has a funny way of reminding you that beautiful and hard can exist at exactly the same time.

This summer wasn’t perfect. I hated not being able to sleep in at home, wake up and let the kids linger in their beds, open the curtains to let the light in, the smell of pine and lemon as I cleaned summertime footprints from the floor, and head outside during the heat of the day to enjoy our deck and pool.

There were things happening behind the pretty pictures. There were worries. Tears. Stress. Changes we didn’t ask for and days when I felt like I was simply trying to make it through to the next one. And yet, there was still so much good.

I think that’s one of the biggest things this season has taught me.

A beautiful life doesn’t have to be a perfect life.

Maybe gratitude isn’t pretending everything is wonderful. Maybe gratitude is being able to look around in the middle of the mess and still recognize what is. It’s watching your children laugh and thinking, remember this.

It’s realizing that even while you’re walking through something difficult, life is still quietly handing you beautiful moments.

You can be struggling and grateful.

You can be tired and happy.

You can wish some things were different while knowing there are other things you wouldn’t change for the world.

You can carry both.

And I think I did a lot of that this summer.

Maybe that’s why I felt sentimental as we spent the last weekend of it on the water, our happy place. I’m not quite ready to trade bare feet for socks and boots or dock sunsets for early darkness. I’m not ready to close the chapter on the summer that somehow felt incredibly long and impossibly short all at once. I’m not ready for this to possibly be the last summer that our college daughter wants to spend her time with us or the last summer that Beau needs his floaties to swim while we listen to his tiny little voice.

I know there will come a day when I would give anything to step back into one of these ordinary summer evenings.

And I’ll remember that during a season when life didn’t always feel steady, somehow we still found beautiful places to land.

Because seasons change. They always do. And maybe the secret isn’t trying so hard to hold onto them. Maybe it’s learning to be fully there while they’re ours. So here’s to the last weekend of summer.

To the beautiful parts.

To the hard parts.

To everything they taught us.

And to remembering that sometimes the seasons that don’t go according to plan become the ones we never forget.

Until the tide comes in,

Mary Faison, Editor