Through my childhood and teenage years, my family moved around a lot. While our home address changed often, our favorite vacation place was the ocean, and we went there many times, up and down the Atlantic seaboard. One year when my brother and I were teenagers, my dad wrote a poem inspired by watching us run ahead of him, away from him, along the beach, where our smaller selves used to cling to his hand and struggle to keep up.

Now I’m the parent, and this is the last summer before my oldest moves out of my house and into a college dorm room (two weeks from today!). It’s been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, and in one of the more angsty moments recently, she said to me, “my life is falling apart!” Which is a hard truth about growing up – the life you know is shrinking, fading, becoming the life you knew – to make way for the bigger life you are stepping into.

This is a song for Luthien, with footage from a video Nathan took of our kids enjoying the Ocean City, New Jersey surf on our vacation this summer. To quote the boardwalk souvenir shop we browsed later that day, “happiness comes in waves!”

You got a lot of something, I hope you take it with you
But bring it on back here sometimes, I’m gonna miss you child
Life as you know it’s falling apart without a doubt but
What you don’t know is out there for you to go and find

You were born for this
You were made for these times
You’re the hopeful face
Of the human kind

You gotta look ahead now, don’t worry I’m behind you
Loving you like I always have and always will
Life is the thing you make it so make the thing you want to
Take the scenic route, blaze a happy trail

You were born for this
You were made for these times
You’re the hopeful face
Of the human kind

You were born for this
You were made for these times
You’re the hopeful face
Of the human kind