Feral Friday: Bucket Hats & Plot Holes

There we were killing time on a golden hour walk with my toddler while waiting for a dinner table. Barefoot chaos, and the best sandy snooze button on toddler patience. You know, that sacred window between “we're making memories” and “the tiny human is going to fully melt down if bread doesn't arrive in 7 minutes.”

And that’s when I saw them.

An older couple, absolutely living their best life in their matching bucket hats, trying to figure out selfie mode like it was a game of Clue left by Steve Jobs himself. At one point I think they opened the weather app and almost took a photo of the radar. But they were so cute. Laughing, stumbling through it, clearly a little love/sun-drunk and completely in sync. They looked like newlyweds who’d already survived taxes, colonoscopies, and probably at least a few teenagers. They were still very much acting like young love… but I could tell they also had a paid off mortgage and a crumpled shared tube of Voltaren and decades of water under the bridge.

They were way gray, quite squishy, and beaming like two high school kids in love for the first time… but they’d lived a whole damn life together. Not just brunch and vacations and curated IG feeds. Real life. With mismatched Tupperware lids that didn’t fit on any of the containers and tiffs about thermostat settings.

I watched them with a lump in my throat the size of a pool noodle. Because once upon a time (less than 90 days ago), I thought that would be me. One marriage. One great, long, weird, wonderful life together. One house full of well worn furniture and loud grandkids and aging dogs. One story. One book with a happy ending. I believed in the “grow old with me” thing like it was written in stone. I never once doubted I’d have a 60th anniversary. I never dreamed that just wasn’t in the cards for me

My story veered. Violently. No foreshadowing. No build up.

Just a trapdoor.

And then a free fall into... idek yet?

One day you're laughing together in the sunshine and the next you're boxing up his things while Googling how to fix the garage door.

This was a plot twist so abrupt, the book editors would’ve flagged it as “completely unrealistic.”

And now? Me and my tiny beach goblin, dodging seagulls and hunger tantrums while I try not to cry in public. Still holding space for joy, still spotting beauty in strangers fumbling with iPhones, still believing in forever love... but just not for me.

Not again.

Once was all I had in me.

One and done.

Now all I have left is the “done”.

I just can’t do this again. I won’t.

All I had in me, I gave to that life. That story. That dream. I put my whole heart into it and doubled down so many times.

But done doesn’t have to mean defeated.

It means the vows I thought I’d say once in my life? I’m saying again… this time to myself. And to my kids.

To love them fiercely. To choose the three of us daily. To show up, for them and for myself.

I vow to laugh even when the milk spills.

I vow to buy snacks I like too.

I vow to dance in the kitchen, even if the oldest rolls his eyes.

I vow to keep going, even on the days I feel like a hacked Roomba just aimlessly bumping into stuff sucking up mess after mess.

I vow to love us, completely. To honor the mess and the magic. To keep showing up, with grace and bandaids and everyone’s favorite meals. Just me, vowing forever in a half-sane whisper, while cutting up a third portion of cotton candy grapes.

No matching rings. No fanfare. No his and hers bucket hats. Just a quiet promise: me and the boys are forever. We are the love story now. And that’s enough.

Also, the selfie couple did eventually figure it out and celebrated like they won the lottery, so there’s still hope for us all.

Love y’all more’n my luggage,

Sara