It was billed as a sunset wildlife tour, but was in fact a booze cruise, one onto which I boarded my family alongside honeymooners and bachelorette parties. While this meant a wild ride (wildlife tour= shots if you see a dolphin), it also meant that we alone disembarked on the sandbar. We walked through the waves, showing the kids how they could locate bubbles beneath the water and dig for sand dollars. We unearthed treasures while the sun set around us, transforming the surf into a liquid rainbow.

This was the year of seashells. We scoured the coast of Maine for them, marveling at the tiny crabs that emerged. We poked at them on the beaches of the Chesapeake and lined them up along sandcastles in St. Augustine. We pulled them from freezing rivers on hikes and picked them out of mud. We bleached them in the sun and carted them in pockets and purses, in backpacks and to show and tell.

Most dot the yard now, slowly grinding to powder and settling into the foundations of our home. The more pristine ones sit on bookshelves or serve as dishes in the playhouse, little pieces of concluded adventures, the treasured artifacts of 2023.

Objectively, we will look back on this year as one of the hard ones. The year where we were too burnt out to continue traditions like our beloved annual donut party. Where I cried too often in anger, in frustration, in despair over another rejected meal or solo bedtime or sleepless night.  The year of James being gone too much and both of us stretched too thin. The year of anxiety over difficult decisions for our family.

Our kids are not blind to this.

But I dare to hope that they will look back and see more.

May they remember sunsets on the beach and dancing in the kitchen, movie nights and our collective obsession with the Ramona Quimby series. Milestones reach and celebrated. May they reach their hands into the waters of this year and wrap their fingers around treasures initially obscured. May they pull them up, tuck them away, and remember this as the year we spent searching for seashells.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “365 Words”.