Heyl: Returning To The Past Before Plunging Into The Future

When dramatic changes are afoot, people naturally cling to things that make them comfortable. The tumult is easier to absorb that way.

That premise provided the framework for this year’s family vacation. After an extended absence, we returned to the Delaware town where my wife and I annually used to take our two daughters.

From the time they were infants, we’d make the trek to Rehoboth Beach. Days were spent broiling in the sun, lunching on Thrasher’s fries and getting sunburned. Evenings were reserved for Funland, the insanely loud boardwalk amusement park offering skee-ball, Gravitron thrills and Haunted Mansion scares.

(Rehoboth also is the place where we endured a week’s worth of nonstop crying from my colicky younger daughter during her first trip there; where my older daughter once was stung by a jellyfish and where a seagull once dropped a large mess on me on the boardwalk. No vacation is perfect.)

Five years ago, the routine had grown stale for the girls. One of them, I don’t recall which, approached me after our return and said, “Dad, can we please go somewhere else next year?” I saw the point. Other parts of the cosmos were available to explore besides the insignificant speck of Delaware, no matter how tasty the fries might be on that speck.

So we vacationed elsewhere for the next four years, and I was convinced the Rehoboth era had ended.

But shortly after last year’s getaway, the girls, now 17 and 14, watched me leave the only job I had during their lifetimes and leap into the unknown. They then each went through not insignificant teen trials. The school year was riddled with uncertainty and constantly shifting situations.

In the background while these things transpired was the knowledge that another significant change is looming. The 17-year-old was on the cusp of her senior year and pondering her post-graduation options. We’re all aware the family dynamic will be drastically altered when she goes off to college.

I believe those factors inspired the girls to seek the comfortable old shoe of vacation spots this year. When we began discussing potential locales, both of them said, “Dad, can we please go back to Rehoboth this year?”

So we did what we hadn’t done in half a decade. We embraced the familiar.

Rehoboth hadn’t changed much, that’s largely its charm, but I saw the place in full funhouse mirror-mode. The toddlers who once held their tiny hands in mine on the boardwalk now were strangely elongated, as though they now were young women.

One early morning I heard these young women leaving the suite predawn. Curious as to their destination, I put on my sandals and followed them down to the beach, where they had gone to watch the sun rise.

I observed them from a distance and got close enough to take their picture but otherwise let them be. They’ll be sisters forever, but they won’t always be together. I wanted them to remember the moment as a special one shared alone.

A sense of finality gripped me. But as I watched them watch the great orange ball ascend in the sky, I recognized that fighting life's transitions is a fool's errand. Circumstances shift as constantly as beach sand beneath your feet and sometimes that can be uncomfortable.

But that’s OK. No matter how drastic the change you might experience one day, the sun always comes up the next.

Eric Heyl is Patch’s Pittsburgh field editor. Reach him at 412-334-4033 or Eric.Heyl@Patch.com. Photo by Heyl.