This day will never come again ✨

This past week, Ben and I hit the road for a full circle trip — back to the place, back to the music, where sparks first flew between us. ✨ Five days. Three shows under mountain skies. Reconnecting with each other and old friends.

The last night, we split the show in two. First set, we stood up high, at the very back, taking it all in. The skyline, the stars, the crowd below dancing, moving as one. Second set, we made our way down front, shoulder to shoulder with our friends — close enough to feel the bass in our chests and be enveloped by the band’s energy.

Two different ways of taking in the same night. From the back, I saw the whole picture. From the front, I felt every beat. And I noticed how much joy there was in choosing both.

A month ago, a beach trip with my mom re-inspired the whole idea of savoring, and I’ve been awake to it ever since. One night, we all gathered around the piano at the beach house and sang — voices overlapping, nobody worried about hitting the right note. My mom, at 84, is still living so fully. Up late at the piano. Up early on the floor with the littlest members of the family, playing with toys.

She reads these love notes too, so I’ll say this carefully: I’m not counting anything. I’m just noticing. The way she embraces life. Playing Bocce with the teens. Collecting shells with the littles. Playing spoons with such vigor that everyone scrambles for a seat at the far end of the table. 😆

It reminds me of something Hermann Hesse wrote about the beautiful, fleeting, and precious shortness of life:

There’s no doubt this life is a wild ride. I say it often in these love notes, mostly because I feel it so deeply — more precious these days than before.

Maybe it’s because I sit with impermanence every year on retreat, Day of the Dead in San Miguel, sharing stories and honoring the people we’ve loved and lost. Maybe it’s because I live in a 130-year-old house, built by the town’s mortician, one of the first settlers here in this little mountain town I call home.

But mostly, it’s because I’ve loved people dearly and watched them cross over to another plane. And now I’m watching my mom sing at the top of her lungs around a piano, and I don’t want to miss a single note of it.💜

So, right here in the middle of summer, the middle of the year — I keep thinking about that sun, the one that will never shine quite like this again.

Not as a countdown. Not as pressure to catch every sunset. Just as an invitation to notice — the wide view and the close-up, the singing around the piano and the starry mountain sky. All of it offered once and never quite the same way twice.

May we notice something today that we’ll never experience quite the same way again.