This week our entire family descended on Key West to celebrate my wife’s 50th birthday.
Two of our sons and their wives flew in, one from California and one from Orlando, and everyone else rearranged work, school and schedules so we could spend five days together.
Which, once children become adults, is no small accomplishment.
Getting the entire family together now is like trying to reunite the Von Trapp family after they all got married and moved to different states.
But we did it and it has been wonderful.
Swimming. Shared meals. Walks through town. Lots of conversations. Lots of laughing. My wife even had custom T- shirts made for all, gave mani/pedi’s, and organized a craft for our daughters and daughters-in-law.
Naturally, there was pickleball with the boys, because apparently men don’t need crafts, we bond by aiming pickleballs at each other’s feet.
But the best part hasn’t been any of those things…It’s simply been being together.
There’s something deeply satisfying about sitting back and watching your children enjoy one another as adults.
They’re in completely different seasons now. Some are married. Some with children. They have careers, responsibilities, and households of their own.
Yet put everybody back under one roof and something familiar returns… they’re just brothers and sisters again, and Mom and Dad get to sit back and take it all in.
Yesterday afternoon, I was swimming with my 8-year-old daughter.
The house we’re staying in has a big wall to climb and jump from into the pool.
She looked at me and asked: “Dad, will you climb up there and jump in with me?”
This was after I had already played more than two hours of pickleball that morning…and another two hours with my boys that afternoon.
My mind said, “What a wonderful father-daughter bonding opportunity.”
My body was strongly suggesting an alternative activity…preferably one involving a chair and absolutely no climbing, but then I thought about my older kids.
Twenty-plus years ago, when they were little, I wouldn’t have hesitated and it occurred to me that my youngest daughter shouldn’t get a different version of Dad simply because she arrived later in the story.
She deserves some of those same memories.
So up I went and we jumped.
It wasn’t pretty. Let’s just say there was a jump, a splash, and absolutely no reason to review the replay, but we jumped together…and she smiled.
That’s all that mattered.
A few hours later, our entire family was gathered around the table eating burritos and drinking mojito mocktails my son made.
I looked around.
Everyone was talking, laughing, eating and enjoying one another and I leaned over to my wife and quietly said, “I wish I could make time stand still right now.”
My whole family around one table.
Full tummies… and even fuller hearts.
It just doesn’t get much better, but here’s the problem with time:
It has absolutely no interest in standing still.
Children grow up. People get married. Careers get busy. Families spread out. New generations arrive and those ordinary Tuesday nights when everyone was automatically home for dinner eventually become special occasions that require plane tickets.
Maybe the answer isn’t trying to hold onto time. Maybe it’s making sure we’re capable of fully participating in it while it’s here and that’s where I’ve been thinking about health differently.
Health isn’t merely the absence of pain, symptoms or disease. Health is capacity.
It’s having enough in the tank to participate in your own life. Enough capacity to travel.
To walk through town. To stay at the dinner table. To play pickleball with your grown sons and, occasionally, to climb a wall because an 8-year-old thinks jumping off it together sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea.
Health gives us a bigger YES and here’s what we sometimes forget:
Our health doesn’t affect only us.
We’re somebody’s husband or wife. Somebody’s mom or dad. Somebody’s son, daughter, grandparent or friend.
There are people whose memories have us in them. That’s a pretty good reason to take care of ourselves. Not because we’re desperately trying to stay young.
That ship sailed a while ago…and apparently left me holding a pickleball paddle and not because taking care of ourselves gives us control over tomorrow. It doesn’t, but we can steward the bodies we’ve been given so that, for as long as possible, we’re able to keep showing up for loved ones in our lives.
Because life’s most important invitations usually aren’t dramatic. They’re surprisingly ordinary.
“Want to take a walk?” “Come sit with us.” “Can we play?” “Will you come?” Or...
“Dad, will you jump in the pool with me?” and here’s what I’m realizing:
We can’t make time stand still, but we can do our best to stay healthy enough to fully participate in the moments we wish would…
Because sometimes the moments we almost say NO to become the memories we’re most grateful we said YES to.
Dr. Derek ‘Currently on Island Time’ Taylor
