Slowing Down Can Be Maddening—and Awe-Inspiring

Pausing a busy life for something slower can feel, in rough order, exciting, then terrifying and maddening before the amazement arrives.

Included in this week’s In Kind on Monday:

• A coming-to-terms with the not-always-Instagrammable parts of down-shifting

• The nootropic coffee creamer we’re loving in our coffee

• And just for paid newsletter subscribers…

• A closet-tip video shot from, well, Leah’s closet

• And an ode to the new Gap jeans we’re obsessing over. xLeah + Hannah

  ---

What’s Special?

Words by Hannah Weil McKinley

I moved my daughters to a small town on the coast of Maine for the month of July. The same place where I spent all my summers growing up, before I fell in love with a San Franciscan and getting to this corner of the world presented a bigger challenge for us West Coasters.

This year, my husband and I made the decision to give our girls as much of a Maine summer as we could, even if it meant he had to stay in the city and work (because he loves his daughters that much). We hugged Dad goodbye and readied ourselves for a summer out of the city with my parents. It sounded special to me. 

We arrived and settled in; pancakes and French toast with their grandparents for breakfast, followed by a walk or a scavenger hunt on the beach and an afternoon spent running in the yard and playing in the forest before a ride to town for ice cream. 

But things are different here, too. A car ride somewhere might mean thirty minutes just to grab a coffee or a popsicle. A ride out to dinner is at least that long; a ride to bigger attractions, like the aquarium, is an hour with two little kids in the car, wondering if “we’re there yet.”

We spend a lot of time outside, and even playing at the town park feels like a big outing for the day. At first, it took getting used to—a reset from the city where we can walk to the farmer’s market or down the street to grab a bagel. We can jump in the car, and in five minutes we’re at school or a friend’s house or a movie theater or a Target.

The girls whined through the first few rides to town—bathroom breaks on the side of the road and squabbling in the backseat. There were ice creams and bribes just to make it through an hour or so of errands, so much so that I’d begin to question why we got in the car in first place. It hit me often that what they know is so different, but I want them to know this, too—and I want them to love it like I do. Still, I wondered if I was forcing it…

What I’ve noticed in the last three weeks since we arrived is that a break with your own routine in some ways forces an examination of the way you might typically do things—and then asks the question: How would you do them differently?  

It forces you to look at your choices—because they are your choices—and ultimately challenge your satisfaction with them.

It’s made me reflective. How much we’re dependent on the comforts of home—the convenience and the readiness of things. It’s made me question how much of that we provide to our children, and how much of that they get used to. 

It’s also not lost on me how lucky we are to slow down. That the luxury is not a five-star hotel or a Michelin-star restaurant—neither of which you’ll find here on the island—but rather, the fact that there are no real demands on my children or our time. The luxury is actually letting kids be bored, pushing off immediate gratification, and unearthing imagination.  

It’s the same for me—I’ve traded a Starbucks addiction for my mom’s pour-over coffee, and it’s the first thing I look forward to each morning. I’ve found that things taste better when we make them, that sitting outside with a bowl of cherries at the beach is an activity unto itself, and that my heart will fill every time I close my eyes and see my parents reading stories and tucking my kids in at night, just as they did every evening here.

It’s been a gift for me to return to a summer routine that’s familiar, even if no longer my pace at this phase in life. To experience the rituals I connected with as a child and to deepen that connection for myself with my daughters, and with my parents. 

You begin to see that the slow-down is the gift—it’s not the ice cream, but how much sweeter it is when you have the stillness to see life as it is. To experience what we love without being wrapped up in the frills of other things, to see them stripped down and for what they are. To dig into relationships and focus on the people you love.

It’s not that the things themselves are more special here, but that we have the space to soak up the magic and to relish in it. It’s enough, in fact, to forget what we were ever missing, especially when you realize that restlessness in the backseat of the car will soon become a sing-along to the Beatles if you let it.

---

The stuff that’s become essential, really. Plus, an accessory find I *had* to add to cart.

1. During my stay in Maine, I’ve upgraded my coffee at home with this. It’s a natural creamer that has a sweet coconut kind of flavor. More than that, it contains an amino acid that helps with cognitive function, mood, and focus. I mix it with my coffee and milk and have never been more excited to wake up and get to the kitchen each morning.