Simplicity
Maybe it’s because in six months I celebrate my last birthday in my 30s. Maybe it’s because I live such a busy life between four kids, a husband, my business, home, travel, and everyone’s activities that I crave something the simple. Maybe I miss my grandmother so much that I find myself channeling her in many of my decisions. Or perhaps I’m just tired.
Perhaps it’s a little of all of the above.
Make no mistake – I’m not ready to stop traveling or living a social life. I simply feel a pull toward things that are slower, simpler, and that fill my soul. Game nights with my husband and my kids. Family vacations. Family dinners. Evening walks around the neighborhood. Sunday mornings on the golf course. Sunday afternoons by the pool reading a good book while the kids play in the water and my husband throws the football for the kids to dive and catch. Lazy mornings in bed. A long, sweaty run. Spending time watering my new plants and dreaming of cultivating a breathtaking garden. Our home filled with people we love who make us laugh and feed my soul so much good energy and happiness.
I crave these things. I cannot get enough of them. Over the weekend, my very sweet friend accompanied me to the nursery to help me choose planters and flowers for our pool deck. My husband usually does things like this since he has a green thumb and I don’t, but I’d mentioned to my sweet friend a while back that I really wanted to learn to garden. It reminds me so much of my grandmother and her beautiful flowers and gardens, and I very much regret the fact that I never took the time to ask her to teach me when she was alive. I mean the woman had 102 years of experience and I had 37 of those years to learn – and I did not. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it’s a hard lesson that tomorrow is never promised and the smallest, most minute details are the ones that I’ll miss out on the most if I don’t enjoy them now.
Regardless, we went to the nursery at 8:30 in the morning, matching hats and coffee in hand, and she helped me choose beautiful flowers, succulents, and accent plants to place in planters around my pool deck. Then she came home with me, taught me to plant them, how to plant them so they complement one another, and how to care for them. She’s been checking in with me regularly since to be sure I’m watering them and to throw in bits and pieces of information she thinks I may need as a new flower mom. It was early – I don’t like early mornings on the weekend – and I loved every second of it. It was so much fun, and I feel so much more knowledgeable about flowers and plants, and I’m already dreaming of my future garden (while realistically giving myself a minute to see if I can even handle my six planters before I go spend a small fortune on full landscaping materials).
That afternoon was spent laying around the pool while the kids swam, my husband was grilling, and we hosted three of our favorite couples (well, two and a half of them since Kyle couldn’t be here) and their kids. It was slow, simple, and easy. The twins slept over with our friends down the street, we got up Sunday and headed to the golf course for their lessons and to play ourselves, and we followed that up with a trip to the vegetable stand and home to lay by the pool once more. I found myself craving more weekends like this one and counting down until we have another free weekend at home.
Nearing 40 isn’t anything I’m afraid of. Age doesn’t bother me. It’s a number. I’m only as old as I feel. I’ve never felt nervous about aging or reaching a milestone birthday, but I do love the concept of growth as I age. It’s so good. I thought my 30s were a million times better than my 20s, yet in my 29th year, you could not have convinced me for a million years that there was any chance my 30s could top my 20s because those were the most amazing years. I married my husband. We had our first two babies and I was pregnant with our third on my 30th birthday (I didn’t find out until a month after I turned 30 that baby three was actually three and four). We built our first home. I built a business. We traveled the world. We built a life. Nothing would ever top that. Then, our 30s hit. We added two new babies. We bought our dream house and remodeled it making it our own. We continued to build my business. My husband found his dream job and began working from home. We gained so much more time as a family. We solidified our friendships with our favorite people and continued traditions we started in our 20s (and added a few more babes to the mix) and met some new favorites along the way. We made more memories. We became busier than ever. We realized we were living the life we used to discuss one day having. Even now at almost 39, I cannot see how my 40s will be better than my 30s, yet I know they will set my 30s on fire.
I’ve grown – we have grown – so much, and I realize that me craving simplicity is another change. It’s me settling down. It’s me realizing what’s the most important in life. The moments…the smallest, most insignificant in the moment moments (while still loving my beautiful shoe collection). There is always another pair of designer shoes. There is always another gorgeous handbag or pair of sunglasses. There are limited moments in which I’ll have all four of my babies home with me and my husband. Addison begins high school in the fall. Ava middle school. The twins 3rd grade. Eight years ago when the twins were born was yesterday, and that time flew by. In half that time, my sweet firstborn will be on her way to college. Time is a thief, and in my heart I know that these moments that seem so small are so much bigger than we ever imagined.
So, here’s to a season of lazy pool days and outdoor living being surrounded by the people we love the most making memories, laughing, and thriving in the simplicity of it all.
It’s okay to change. It’s okay to decide you no longer enjoy some of the things you once enjoyed. It’s all right to want less yet so much more, per se.
Tiffany Raiford 