I grew up going to Myrtle Beach.
Every year, same destination. My father knew the route by heart — back before the interstates could take you part of the way there, he could navigate from Virginia to the beach without even glancing at a map. Vacation had a definition in our family, and it looked like the Grand Strand.
When I had my own family, I carried the beach instinct with me. We explored beaches up and down the Carolinas — different destinations, same philosophy. Sun, sand, water. Relax. Reset. Go home. It never occurred to me that this was a limited view of the world, because to me it wasn’t a limited view of anything. It was just our vacation.
Then one of my teenagers looked at me and asked: “Why do we only ever go to the beach?”
I didn’t have a great answer. Part of it was simply what I’d grown up knowing. But part of it was something I didn’t talk about much — for a good stretch of my twenties and thirties, anxiety made travel genuinely hard. Confined spaces, traffic, long car trips, planes — none of it came easily.
But even as the anxiety eased with age, I didn’t suddenly become someone with wanderlust. The truth is, I am a person who is deeply, genuinely happy at home. Southwest Virginia, Salem and the Roanoke Valley, is where I want to be. My garden is where you’ll find me on a weekend morning — hands in the dirt, watching something grow that wasn’t there last season. Summer means Smith Mountain Lake, the people I love most in the same place at the same time. I have never once stood in my own backyard and thought I wish I were somewhere else. A full life and a busy law practice have a way of making home feel like more than enough.
There was, however, one exception. If you had asked me at any point in my adult life (after I had seen a particular movie) whether there was one place in the world I’d want to see, I would have said Greece. I’d watched Mamma Mia more than once (yes, that is a slightly embarrassing reason to want to visit a country). The beauty of the Greek islands lived in the back of my imagination, even when I had absolutely no plan to act on it.
Then life did what life does.
In recent years, our family has walked through some significant losses. Grief rearranges your priorities. When my sisters floated the idea of a cruise around Greece, we sat down to
lunch to make it official. Somewhere between the appetizers and the entrées, the restaurant speakers started playing “Mamma Mia.” We took it as a sign to finalize our plans.
The person who grew up going to Myrtle Beach, who spent years managing anxiety around the simple act of getting somewhere, who is most herself in her garden or at the lake surrounded by the people she loves — that person said yes without blinking.
I’m not announcing that I have become a world traveler or an international adventurer. What I have discovered is that aging and the losses we carry have a way of making why not? feel more urgent than it used to.
You can be prepared for the future — and as an estate planning attorney, I spend my professional life helping people do exactly that — but preparation is not the same as postponement. Taking care of tomorrow doesn’t mean waiting on today.
So here I am, sitting on a cruise ship docked in Athens, writing this while I await the adventure ahead. I have a photo of myself standing in front of the Parthenon — me, a girl from Salem who once thought Myrtle Beach was the whole world — and I’m still amazed I’m here.
I’m also humming a little ABBA. No apologies.
-Robyn
