My Idyllic Summer of Time Travel

… okay not really. But kind of.

“It feels like I’m time travelling.” This is how I’ve been explaining it to people when they ask how my summer is going. I’ve spent the entirety of summer on BC’s Sunshine Coast; a whopping 2.5 months, which is the longest stretch of time I’ve ever spent away from home in Vancouver. We leave tomorrow, and I’m grappling with this weird dual life I’ve experienced this summer. One where the City version of myself is stuck in an endless loop taking my three kids to their many activities and constantly wondering what to make for dinner (chicken, pasta, tacos, repeat!), and this Coast version who, beyond the basics of keeping my kids generally fed and content, does mostly what I want with our unstructured days in a setting so aesthetically bucolic it borders Trad Wife territory (except the only thing I have in common with Trad Wives is we’re both wives).

Not down with Trad Wife anything EXCEPT old-timey pajamas

I sit outside and read while my kids play somewhere in the yard or jump on the trampoline (if you have space for one of these they are worth their weight in gold!). I write for Substack or podcast whenever I feel like it. Making meals is often a group activity with a side of wine or an espresso martini, which I’ve been obsessed with ever since season one of Below Deck Med (#justiceforHannah!). My house sits along an inlet, so occasionally a pod of orcas will swim by when I’m washing the dishes - peak Canadiana! I have very warm and fuzzy feelings about this place for sure; a quaint 1980’s build that we bought on a whim after we felt the pandemic and millennial squeeze. We spent a full year renovating, and this marked our first summer here. This is the part that I acknowledge the immense privilege to be able to do this, partly through ‘hard-work’ (everyone works hard, so take that Rachel Hollis!), but mostly through luck. As an immigrant who moved here from Tehran when I was five and watched my parents very slowly, and sometimes painfully, build their new lives here, I realize it’s extremely not normal to live this way, and sometimes stress wondering whether my kids will think it’s normal (I hope not). 

Daily insane view

The logistics of setting up your summer this way is important to talk about, since I myself am extremely nosy about how anyone manages to do anything. My life-long pop culture obsession is for now, still a hobby. I don’t rely on it to make an income, nor do I work outside the home right now. My husband does work full-time, and he was able to mostly work remotely from a spare bedroom with a desk here. Vancouver is only a 40 minute ferry ride away, so he went into the office as needed. Buying this place was a real shot-in-the-dark decision. We knew to make it worth it (cost per use and all that), we’d want to maximize our time here. It was mostly great, and the biggest hurdle ended up being lack of childcare/babysitters. Having none here meant we were with our kids all day, everyday, save for a few summer camps. This is where having a trampoline and a big yard came in handy; they were pretty great at entertaining themselves and had the kind of roaming free play that doesn’t happen at home. 

Given I write this culture Substack and have a podcast on notable culture beats, I spend not an insignificant amount of time on what’s happening around me, and how it’s making me feel. I’ve tried to pay attention to why this place feels so, well… special. What I’ve been most taken by this summer is that it’s less about the place that I’m so enamoured with, and more about time. Both in the physical sense of just feeling like I have more of it (seriously a day here can really drag), but also in the sense that my experience here feels like something from the past that’s being forgotten, more steeped in community and people than the individual (or individual family unit). As we replace real-life connection with parasocial ones and the endless scroll, we risk forgetting what we’ve left behind. I’ve spoken about community many times over on Instagram, and realize that many people are lucky enough to have community where they live. Interestingly, this often happens in places filled with ex-pats where everyone is new, away from the safety bubble of their families, and open to making new connections. When I speak to my friends from Calgary, they have a very different experience than I do of Vancouver (seriously, go on any subreddit about Vancouver and there’s many threads from newcomers wondering why nobody here wants to talk to them). I don’t want to shit on Vancouver too much, it’s my home and I generally like it. With that said, building community can feel like real resistance; it’s possible, but you have to put in the work. On the coast, everybody wants to talk to you, and at length! I recently called a pest control company to ask about ant control, and we spent more than half that conversation on things that had nothing to do with bugs. Honestly? If I was in my (real life) home in Vancouver, this would have annoyed me. Just tell me if you can help with my my ants and make it quick! Here though? In the alternate version of my real life, I have all the time in the world. Sure, tell me about the cool botanical garden event happening next week, or about Henry the corn guy’s stand where you find the freshest corn on the coast (can concur, his corn really is the best!).

Indeed, the botanical garden was pretty special

‘Downtown’ here is Cowrie Street- a small length of road flanked by about 20 stores on both sides. It’s charming and cute but also very imperfect which I love. The ‘mall’, if you can call it that, is a relic from the past. Just a handful of stores that would make you wonder how they’re making ends meet if not for all the local support. A deeply nostalgic wall of gumball/candy machines that I’m highly suspicious of (how often are these freshly stocked?!) sit next to those little rides that take a quarter to go round and round in. Nothing is new or shiny, it’s old and lived in and works. What it lacks in abundance and choice, it makes up for in careful curation (I hate this word but it’s fitting here). There are no chain stores except for a few Mark’s Work Warehouse’s in strip malls nearby. Instead, you’ll find lots of slow fashion, locally made goods, vintage stores that have the coolest everything, and the most magical bookstore I’ve ever been in (Talewind Books if you find yourself on the coast!) My eldest kid sold her handmade bracelets at our favourite general store Good Fridays, and no way would she be able to do this in Vancouver.

I can’t talk about time through the lens of nostalgia here without talking about my neighbours. Most of my neighbours here are seniors; people who have lived in the homes they built around the time my own house was constructed, about 40 years ago. They have deep roots and connections on the coast (and probably lots of friends), but they are generous with their time, and will always shoot me a text if anything noteworthy is happening (a community beach cookout, or black bears in someone’s garden). A few doors down is a family with young kids, and when I tell you I nearly had a heart attack from shock the first time they knocked on my door to ask if my kids could come outside to play… This simply doesn’t happen at home in Vancouver. Playdates there are arranged through painstaking coordination of schedules around multiple activities, the logistics of which feel like mental gymnastics. Spontaneity is as abundant here as over-scheduled playdates back home. One of the knocks on my door this summer came from a neighbour down the street; his wife was out with a few friends and her car had broken down. Could I give him a lift to where she was? There was no text beforehand to see if I was free, he simply showed up and asked for help. I was more than happy to do it, and have a theory that nobody wants to ask for help anymore and that’s part of why we’re all struggling. We also seem to forget how good it feels to just help someone out casually; it’s such a critical part of building community, but we don’t ask for help unless we’ve exhausted every other option. Is anybody even asking their neighbour to borrow a cup of sugar anymore!? I honestly don’t know. Next time you need a favour, please just ask someone. They’ll be less annoyed and feel more useful than you may realize. 

Being our first summer here, we were probably a little over zealous in the amount we hosted friends and family, but wouldn’t have it any other way. Because my husband was still working from home, we setup some boundaries around not having weekday guests, but nearly every weekend saw people stay with us. At times it felt like we were running a bed and breakfast, to the point I bought a guest book for my friends to sign on their way out (happy to report we have mostly 5 star reviews!).  For some, the appeal of a family cabin is partly the escape and solitude, and I totally get that. But, we learned pretty quickly during the height of the pandemic that our family functions best when it’s not always just the five of us, so our weekend guests were always a very welcome break from the otherwise lazy dog days of summer. There’s something to be said for sitting down with friends and breaking bread, but you learn a lot about people you already know pretty well when they’re staying with you for a few days. 

We had 11 families here over the summer, and it became like an unspoken dance; us, trying to be what our version of ‘good’ hosts are, and them, trying to be what their version of ‘good’ guests are. As someone literally obsessed with watching how different people move and navigate in the world, this was wildly interesting to me! Coincidentally, I read a piece recently in The Cut on ‘how to be a good guest/host,’ and while it was entertaining, I disagree with the general formality of the piece. Instead, what I found worked best for us was a lack of formality. Guests being comfortable enough to grab a drink or a snack, and me not having to decipher whether they were hungry or thirsty. We skipped pancakes and big fancy breakfasts in favour of our kids getting up with their kids, where they’d work together on an easy breakfast of toast or cereal while the parents slept in (a win for all!). We’d normally fire up the bbq for lunch and dinner, and sometimes would do something a little extra like bake bread, but guys— three days straight is a long time to have guests. You can keep the jig up for a dinner party one night, but over the span of three days, you should probably just be yourself and not the most aesthetic version of you. And yes, it was at times hectic. Nearly everyone who stayed with us has young kids, so occasional chaos is par for the course. Having friends stay over was also a loophole to my own ‘no sleepovers’ rule for my kids (they can’t complain, they had both friends and their parents stay with us all summer!). Just kidding, they will still complain but them’s the breaks, kids. Growing up, I spent almost every summer visiting our family friends at their orchard in Osoyoos, BC. It was this magical little place where we’d play in the orchard until dark and eat fresh cherries and peaches off their trees. I still think about this 20 years later, and hope that this place becomes a small part of the fabric that makes up summer memories of our friends and their kids that will hopefully visit for years to come.

Summer at a glance

I know my feeling of this place is highly idealized. It’s not real-life, but a self-constructed version of reality that is far more idyllic than my place in Vancouver. I only see people I want to see, otherwise remaining wholly inaccessible. It’s honestly a little weird, and the lengths I’ve gone to figure out my millennial burnout/angst is probably best unpacked in therapy. My neighbours and friends that live here year-round face the same issues I have at home; you can’t find a family doctor, schools send out too many emails (stop it!), housing is in crisis, and finding good child or elder care is the elusive golden ticket. None of that is lost on me. That being said, this place is magical in the way it cares for and builds community, a throwback to a time when we’d shop locally without giving it a second thought, vs. express delivery via Amazon. 

There are guilds and clubs for every art and craft you can think of (I was invited to join a quilting club twice—if I was crafty at all I would have taken it up solely because I love the movie ‘How to Make an American Quilt’ so much). All-ages pickleball at the seniors centre is fire, and weekly musical showcases in the park serve as easy gathering places. The general sense that nobody seems to be in a rush feels comforting, a wild contrast to wheel spinning at home. But hey, a whole summer with your kids is actually insane and I won’t pretend it was all amazing. School starting this week will bring some much needed routine, and the cooler weather and changing seasons is something I always look forward to (it’s also the official start of Gilmore Girls rewatch season). At one point, it felt like my kids couldn’t go outside to play for two minutes without someone needing a bandaid, and I had some mild anxiety today when my four year old proudly declared she picked something off a random bush and ate it (it’s fine, ended up being a blackberry but ugh). I just don’t think those will be the things I’ll remember. Instead, I hope it’s the crackling of an outdoor fire, the neighbour kids running through our lawn for a jump on the trampoline, devouring ACOTAR on my patio with a side of espresso martini, and cooking dinner with friends (with a side of espresso martini).