\u201cHey, take a moment to look around at all these people,\u201d I\ntold my daughter. \u201cSee them?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou mean all these pale, pasty, semi-translucent people?\u201d\nshe asked, gazing at the beachgoers around us. They were mostly tourists. It\nwas President\u2019s Day. Un-seasonably warm. And the beach was hoppin\u2019 with out-of-towners,\nall keen on turning their skin lollipop red. You could tell they weren\u2019t\nFloridians because they tromped into the freezing, glacial-like water without\nscreaming as if their skin was being burned off by acid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes \u2026 these people,\u201d I said. \u201cTake a moment and think about\nhow they have worked and saved and planned for months to come here to enjoy a\nday at the beach, maybe the only time they will see something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had taken the day off to celebrate President\u2019s Day the way\nour great leaders always intended: eating ice cream and worrying about whether\na Portuguese man o\u2019 war had attached itself to my ankle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It had struck me that our day at the beach had been\nremarkably easy. We decided on it late in the morning, threw some stuff in a\nbag, grabbed the paddle ball set and went. Twenty minutes later and we had sand\nbetween our toes. That\u2019s St. Augustine living!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut for all of these people,\u201d I told my daughter, \u201cthis is\na luxury \u2013 a rare opportunity. Not everyone can get here so easily. It takes\nyou longer to find your other flip-flop than it does for us to get here. Do you\nrealize that? How special this is?!? Never take that for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My daughter stood there, looking around. Thinking about it.\nAll the people. She turned to me and said: \u201cYeah \u2026 you know, where WAS my other\nflip-flop?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I assumed the moment was lost on her. But I hope not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s something I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot. Trying to\nmake sure I appreciate the little \u2013 and big \u2013 things in life. To not take\nanything for granted \u2013 our location, the weather, the unbelievable sunsets. The\nother evening the sky lit up in such a fantastic orange that I thought my\nneighbor\u2019s house was on fire. I almost called 911! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know why I\u2019ve been feeling this way. This realization\nthat I need to be more grateful and aware. Maybe it\u2019s an age thing. Or maybe\nit\u2019s the local TV crew from Indiana that I had hosted at Flagler College one\nmorning last week. They had come through town to show everyone back home what\nFlorida is like while the rest of the country shivers and shovels snow and\npretty much curses our ability to feel the warmth of the sun. As they marveled\nat architectural wonders of the gilded age, I realized all this beauty had\nbecome routine to me. Ironic, isn\u2019t it? The very things that drew us here were\nnow background noise \u2013 lost in the \u201cevery day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe it was then that I realized I couldn\u2019t take it all for\ngranted anymore. I had to be more aware. And impart this \u201cwisdom\u201d to my\ndaughter, even if it was president\u2019s day and we were supposed to be celebrating\nit with ice cream and an irrational fear of man o\u2019 war. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cHey, take a moment to look around at all these people,\u201d I told my daughter. \u201cSee them?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYou mean all these pale, pasty, semi-translucent people?\u201d she asked, gazing at the beachgoers around us. They were mostly tourists. It was President\u2019s Day. Un-seasonably warm. And the beach was hoppin\u2019 with out-of-towners, all keen on turning their skin lollipop red. You could tell they weren\u2019t Floridians because they tromped into the freezing, glacial-like water without screaming as if their skin was being burned off by acid. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes \u2026 these people,\u201d I said. \u201cTake a moment and think about how they have worked and saved and planned for months to come here to enjoy a day at the beach, maybe the only time they will see something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,558,557,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-nutshells","category-florida","category-getting-old-er-older","category-parenthoodandchildren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1892,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1891\/revisions\/1892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}