I was looking through my journals the other day, trying to decide what to keep and what to let go. Over the years, I’ve filled so many notebooks with scraps of thoughts, half-formed dreams, and the quiet daily details that might not mean much to anyone else but feel like chapters of my life.
As I flipped through the pages, it hit me: at some point, someone else will go through all of this. Maybe my children, probably my daughters, maybe no one at all. I thought about how, when we die, we leave not just our things, but our traces. My words are my history, my touchstone, my intentions unfinished. And I thought, I should make it easier for them. Less stuff to sort through. Less weight to carry.
Then I came across a journal entry from April 2020. The early pandemic days. I had scribbled some thoughts about COVID and vitamin D, the way everyone was searching for answers and trying to hold on to anything that felt like control. One line stood out:
“Spend at least ten minutes out in the sun every day.”
It was underlined twice. I must have really meant it, I remember reading about the Spanish Flu epidemic and how doctors believed that sleeping outside in the sun, helped patients recover.
Last weekend we had spent an hour or two at the little beach at Great Marsh, Gerry Boyle Park. The dogs and my grandchildren floating in the Choptank River. It was the first time in months that I felt really alive, the sound of the sea gulls and the lapping of the tiny waves against my feet sunken in the sand.
Reading my 2020 journal, I smiled. There’s something quietly profound about the instruction to spend time outside. It’s not just about vitamin D. It’s about remembering to step outside. To feel warmth on your skin. To pause. To be alive.
Summer reminds me of that. Long days, ripe with sunlight and the smell of growing things. The season teaches in its own way, urging us to slow down, open the windows, water the tomatoes, sit with a cup of tea, and let the world move around us while we stay still for a moment.
Maybe, in the end, what we leave behind isn’t just the stuff. Maybe it’s reminders like that. Little instructions in the margins. Notes to the people we love, or even to ourselves:
Take the walk. Eat that ice cream. Sit in the sun.
Just for ten minutes. Every day.
Kate Emery General is a retired chef/restaurant owner who was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming. Kate loves her grandchildren, knitting, and watercolor painting. Kate and her husband, Matt, are longtime residents of Cambridge’s West End, where they enjoy swimming and bicycling.
