A friend of mine recently used the phrase “summering hard,” and it has stayed with me ever since I heard it. I grew up in Southern California, where summer meant swimming, family vacations, and long afternoons with nothing to do except play in the sprinklers, lie down on the warm driveway (the smell of petrichor intoxicates me to this day), explore nature, ride my bike to AM/PM, and gather in the L.O.F.T. Even now, the first warm evening can make me feel, briefly, like a kid let out of school. Summer is the part of the year I most hate to see end.

This year, I found myself counting how many summers I might have left. Today I turned 54. If I live to 90, I’ll see roughly 36 more summers, and 21 of those will come before I turn 75, when I expect to slow down a little. I hope to be swimming and traveling well beyond that age, but I’m beginning to understand that the ability to do things easily has a season of its own. Twenty-one summers suddenly seems like a very small number.

Perhaps that’s because years move more quickly now and the pace is accelerating. When I was ten, I waited an eternity for Christmas; at 10% of my total Christmases, each one was a major event in the short history of my life. These days I find myself taking down the decorations and wondering how Christmas came and went so quickly. The same thing happens with birthdays and vacations, each of which represents a smaller and smaller percentage of the total. I spend weeks looking forward to them, then somehow return to ordinary life without having fully taken in the experience.

Near the end of this summer, I shattered my heel after a day kayaking on a lake. Although I’m grateful I got to spend the morning on the lake with my wife, being confined to crutches makes me realize how for granted I took many small pleasures I never thought to count: walking down the street for a coffee, crossing a room to join a conversation, going somewhere on a whim. I expect to walk freely again before too long. But for now, I’m noticing what a luxury that was/is.

Back to what “summering hard” means to me. It means enjoying what’s here without requiring it to be extraordinary. It can be a swim, a crowded dinner table, a Christmas morning, or a very good steak. I don’t need to spend more money or fill every day with plans. I want to give the people and occasions I love more of my attention while they’re in front of me.

Summer is over, and Christmas will be here soon enough. Then another birthday and, God willing, many more summers. However, when my final fall equinox arrives, I’ll undoubtedly look back fondly on a life well lived. But I don’t want to wait until then to know how lucky I was. I want to summer hard while I can, with the people I love beside me and none of us in a hurry to go back inside.