Signs We're Getting Older

I am the oldest of my two siblings. Often times it felt like I couldn't quite share in my new revelations because they just weren't there yet. I am five years older than my brother and nine years older than my sister. I whacked the jungle clear for them although often times I would trip on some big branches that would turn into huge hurdles for them later on, whoops! ha

Anyway growing up we would take a family vacation to the beach every summer without fail. Us three kids would go running into the water and swim out as far as we dared. Giggling at the waves, swimming through the beat downs, getting caught on our toes by crabs, and generally not giving a crap what happened as long as we were swimming. We spent 90% of the time in the water begging our parents to come join us.

Then we got older and I moved out. Then my brother started college and it just seemed a lot harder to get us all at the beach at the same time. Roughly six entire years later, just a few weekends ago, we managed to hit the beach at the same time. The Lover and I made a last minute decision to go and my brother drove down for an 8 hour trip to stay just two days.

I am glad we did. My sister, brother, and I went out just beyond were the waves broke and felt a little bit of deja vu. It felt like old times but we were bigger, smarter, and some of us (certainly not me!) more mature. We talked about how awesome it felt to be in the same ocean at the same time again. Remembering all the fun we had and how seemingly fearless we were. Then we mentioned how the ocean had become a scarier entity through age. Shark Week, jellyfish, education, and happenings to friend's of friends had made us all a little more weary of the water.

We actually knew that a shark was most likely swimming near us whereas when we were little we thought they stayed far away from the shore. We were finally weary of the jellyfish and the crabs. Rip currents and undertoes. We were spending more time on the beach than in the water. We three hit that realization and that's when I knew we had all actually grown up.

So goodbye lack of self awareness, goodbye flips into piles of snow without caring how we landed, goodbye dangerous ramps made halfhazardly, and hello fear, that instinct for survival.

Or maybe not. As both my sister and I got stung by jellyfish that very same trip for the very first time and while discussing it we both managed to say "Eh, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." Maybe nothing can keep us out of the ocean permanently. Maybe that's a damn good thing.