“Look Mom, it’s eating it!” twelve-year-old Jake says, pointing at the bald eagle on a lofty spruce perch, tearing a fish apart in its curved beak. We spot the eagle while kayaking in the bay by the house we are renting in Maine. There are unobstructed views in all directions on the water, and the rhythmic sounds of our paddles splashing are interrupted only by the occasional chortle of a loon or buzz of a tern. The bay is so calm and reflective it feels like we are paddling through the sky, our kayaks kissing the clouds.

Deeply breathing in scents of sea and seaweed, I have finally slowed down the dizzy pace of life enough to notice and appreciate our surroundings.

For much of my adult years, I scurried from one task to another without deliberation, like a rat on a mission. My mission was to make a living and raise a family. This meant most days were spent indoors tied to a desk or tending to children while trying to meet one deadline after another. Once an editor from a magazine called while I was cooking dinner and simultaneously trying to prevent my highly active two-year-old from murdering himself. “Do you think you can get that article to me by next week?” she asked. “Sure, no problem,” I said, while extending the telephone cord so I could grab Jake before he ventured too close to the stove. After hanging up, I was both thrilled that she wanted my article and terrified that I wouldn’t have time to write it.

When you are growing a family and a career at the same time, you live moment to moment, life fast-forwarding with no stop-action. There were always stories waiting to be written, children waiting to be fed, a house waiting to be cleaned. So I operated reflexively rather than reflectively. But while vacationing in Maine, there’s time to hover above my life like a kingfisher above the water before it nabs a fish, noticing and savoring everything dived into.

Spying kingfishers and eagles are just some of many treats experienced in Maine that week. A few days later while I’m swimming breaststroke in the bay, ecstatic by not being confined to a lap lane, the sinuous black head and neck of a cormorant pops out of the water only a few feet away. This encounter surprises both of us, lasting only moments before the bird uses its wings to flap it into the air, splashing the water in the process. The crowning moment of the vacation is when we wake up to glinting on the blueberry bushes of dozens of spiderwebs catching the glitter of dewdrops, astonished and grateful that such simple, commonplace, and natural elements of water and light had transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary. On our final night, while watching the disappearing light of the sun pink and pearl the undersides of fluffy clouds reflected in the water, I ask Frank, ‘If you knew this was the last sunset you would ever see, do you think you would enjoy it more?’

“I suppose so,” he answers. “Wouldn’t you?”

“No, because I’m really enjoying it right now,” I say and take a deep breath, releasing it as a sigh. In those busy middle years, my family could spend only one week each summer in the lobster state.

It was never enough.