As a kid, I recall watching my dad swimming and floating on his back in the water. It was like an amazing magic trick. It seemed he could do it as long as he liked, just float there, gazing up at the sky.
I would try and try but sink like a stone.
On Labour Day, the last day of summer for many people, my wife and I were out with our boys at Crescent Beach. The day was hot, so I had a swim. The water was deliciously warm and I tried my dad's trick.
Eventually, I let go - mastering the knack of trying not to try - and felt a fantastic sensation as my head went back and my hips rose to the surface, almost of their own accord.
My envy of my dad's magic trick was justified: It felt fantastic. I could have stayed for hours.
A day later, my short holiday was over and I went back to work and all that entails. We ushered our oldest son to Grade 2 and the youngest into daycare. It was back to packing lunches, planning meals and signing up the kids for activities, skirting that fine line between enough "exposure" to new things and driving us all bonkers with a jammed schedule.
For many of us, the first weeks of September are a time of excitement about new activities and projects but for me, there is trepidation about over-scheduling life and resenting it later. As life gets busy, carefree downtime evaporates.
This past summer was one of my most enjoyable in years. The glorious stretch of sun helped, as did visits with family.
A good summer can give you that sensation of floating. Life just seems so much simpler, easier than the rest of the year. The future, if your mind wanders that way, seems a quaint, imaginary place over the horizon.
And when you're on a holiday out of town, those feelings are magnified as you visit new places, enjoy the calm, the sun, the food, and wonder if it's possible that life could always be thus.
My wife and I gave the kids a break with their grandparents and spent the August long weekend in Montreal, where we walked, cycled, meandered, and ate and drank our way around a city that seemed created for enjoying life. Residents seemed to spend their days migrating from café to bistro to bar. Patios were jammed.
We also spent a little time in the Gulf Islands this summer, swimming, exploring, reading and skipping stones. Life spent barefoot.
It's at times like this that people often muse about a "big change" in life.
Could I live here? they ask.
Sipping a bowl of coffee at 11 a.m. on a sidewalk patio, I wondered: Wouldn't it be great to live in Montreal all the time?
How about Gulf Island living? Maybe buy a boat, a kayak? Learn to sculpt or paint? Write crime novels?
Browsing the local real estate listings is a common symptom of this state of mind.
For most, it's pure fantasy, a chance to briefly inhabit another life, if only in their mind.
The rational, left brain is put into neutral. That's the boring side that, when the time comes, is only too happy to remind us that our heads are in the clouds. That we're seeing life through a summer lens, a time when life everywhere is different.
Come back to Montreal in December, it sneers, when that sidewalk patio is buried under freshly ploughed snow. And you think the Gulf Islands are peaceful now? Try January, when it's as quiet as an abandoned mine shaft.
But, hey, we all need to float a little sometimes.
And when September returns and we get back to our routines, many of us wish we could just float a little longer.
Who knows?
Maybe, like my dad's trick, with a little practice, it just might be possible.
Chris Bryan is editor of the Burnaby and New Westminster NewsLeader, Black Press sister newspapers of The Tri-City News.
