Back in 2003, when my daughter was still in kindergarten, we took a week-long vacation to a little place called White Lake, NC. It’s a place where my wife had vacationed often as a child, and I’d been there once or twice, but as a family we hadn’t gotten into the habit of taking summer vacations. This was a new thing, and I wasn’t sure I’d like it: a week away from the comforts of home?

But I needn’t have worried. It didn’t take me long to relax and begin to enjoy the change of scenery. I spent my days taking naps, reading, going for long walks, and having a blast playing in the water with my daughter. We played miniature golf at the nearby Putt-Putt. In the evenings we drove to nearby Elizabethtown for dinner at some of the restaurants there. On our last evening, I walked to the end of the pier and looked out over the quiet lake, thinking back over the week we’d just had. It was a bittersweet moment: tears came to my eyes as I thought about how much fun we’d had and about the impending return to the normal routine.

I’d enjoyed that week so much that the following year I was eager to do it again. And so we did. We went back to White Lake and stayed in the same cabin; I filled my days with the same activities, and we made a point of revisiting our favorite Elizabethtown restaurants. As that second White Lake vacation came to an end, I walked to the end of the pier in a conscious attempt at recreating that emotional moment from a year before. Once again I felt that mix of happiness and sadness. I remember asking myself: why do I get to feel this way only once per year?