Nantucket Diaries: The Final Week of Summer

Hello friends! Is anyone else feeling the end of summer blues hit extra hard this year?

I’m writing to you from the halfway point of our final two weeks on Nantucket. Just seven days left. I remember years when we rented for exactly seven days, that was it for the whole summer, and I counted down to the next summer’s trip the second we left. This year we had seven full weeks, and I’m sitting here so sad about only having seven days left. I know…what a ridiculous thought after seven weeks! I’m sure a lot of you fellow Nantucket lovers can relate anyway. There’s something insatiable about being here and I’m starting to understand why, for me.

I am, and always have been, extremely Type A. I run a bit high-stress and relaxing is difficult for me. I'm a doer and I have a hard time just sitting still. I'm just wired that way. My husband once compared me to a Clydesdale horse: kind of just built to work.

So it’s probably no surprise that after marrying an entrepreneur, I became one too. Building a business is truly a non-stop journey. My girls are now 8 and 9. They’re older, but still at the age where you need to be hands-on.

I’ve written before about becoming more of an introvert in the decade since having kids [read here], and that’s a big part of this too. Our social calendar at home is packed, and between that, work, and parenting, I don’t have a lot of reserve left for myself — which leads me to one place, completely burnt out.

What I love here on Nantucket, is the freedom and the anonymity. We’ve met some incredible friends who live and/or summer here too, but the vibe stays relaxed and unstructured (something unfamiliar to me). On Saturday, we met one of those friends at the beach, posted up for the whole day, let the kids play until five, and the day turned into an impromptu dinner and ice cream. Nobody planned any of it. That’s exactly how I want my social life to work now — not scanning a calendar and realizing the next open weekend is eight weeks out, which happens far too often at home and genuinely makes me panic.

Now I’m in my forties, spending more time in a place that’s basically synonymous with slowing down, and I can feel an internal pull I haven’t let myself feel before. I’ve been in drive mode for so long, but I’m starting to realize that’s maybe not where I want to stay.

Nantucket has had more press this year than probably any summer before it — influencer drama, major bands playing the Muse, The Five Star Weekend hit tv series, big brands doing pop-ups all over the island. But none of that is actually what draws people like me here or keeps me coming back. The real pull is quieter than all of that. It’s the complete opposite, in fact. It has nothing to do with cache or popularity, and everything to do with the feeling of a simpler, slower day-to-day. That’s exactly what I’m craving at this stage of life.

I tried negotiating with my husband this morning about coming back for Labor Day. I lost that one, but I did talk him into an extra weekend this fall. He laughs at what he calls my “Nantucket obsession.” He genuinely likes it here — I just wouldn’t put him in the love bucket, and definitely not the obsessed bucket, both of which I’m squarely in. He’s a much more mellow guy by nature, and I don’t think he needs the reset here in quite the same way I do.

The simple things here are what get me, more than anything else. My mornings, especially. I’m up by 5:30, out with the dogs, coffee in hand, laptop on the back porch. Right now our limelight hydrangeas are in full bloom overlooking the pool, and it’s beautiful. I hear seagulls, the ferry horn somewhere in the distance, occasionally people on the bike path across the street — but mostly, it’s just quiet. On the mornings I can smell the ocean, and it’s maybe fifty-fifty, those are the best.

I’ve been trying to walk more, and it’s an easy place to do it — we’re a mile from the beach, so there’s a great loop down and around, past all the houses, taking in how beautiful the landscape is here. I love walking out onto the bike path from our driveway: the early walkers, the bike riders, and especially the people heading to the beach before nine am with their chairs on their backs. I aspire to be one of those people once I retire! Seeing them puts me in a vacation state of mind before I go sit down for a full day of Zoom calls.

I love the little seashells we line up by our kitchen sink. I could technically do that at home in Connecticut (we do live close to the shoreline there as well), but there’s something about collecting them right here that grounds me every time I see them. I love going to Bartlett Farms, too. At home in Connecticut we’re lazy grocery shoppers — Whole Foods delivery, Instacart, whatever’s easiest for our busy life. We don’t have those conveniences here, and while there are days I feel rushed trying to squeeze in a grocery run mid-workday, I actually love the experience at Bartlett. It’s not a chain — you walk in past the most beautiful wildflowers, the produce is incredible, and it just feels like a special way to shop. I love 167 Raw and Pip & Anchor, too — small specialty stores that really do feel special, the kind of places where they know your name.

We’ve been riding our bikes everywhere, including dropping our girls at camp every morning. That is something that just couldn’t happen in our real life at home.

This past weekend was the perfect example of what an idyllic weekend on-island actually does for me. Our weekends in Connecticut are usually so packed with hosting, engagements, and commitments that I go into Mondays exhausted. This weekend did the opposite.

Saturday started with an outdoor workout at Nantucket Fitness (my favorite), a walk to the beach, and a beach day with friends at Steps. The kids played so long that it rolled straight into an impromptu dinner at Straight Wharf Fish, then ice cream. Perfect.

Sunday was more of the same, different beach — we drove onto Smith’s Point, which just reopened, and met up with friends there. We peeled off late afternoon to do the week’s food shopping, an experience in itself if you avoid Saturday and Sunday mornings: Bartlett Farms, then 167 Raw for chicken and seafood. I meal-prepped while the girls swam in the pool, we ate dinner al fresco, watched a movie, and were all asleep by 9:30. Perfect, again.

Our closest friends from our years in Los Angeles have visited us for the second summer in a row now. Between both trips, they’ve spent less than a week total here and yet they’ve still caught the Nantucket bug. My friend said something to me that’s stuck: “It’s like everyone on Nantucket has figured out how to live life.” She’s right!

What Nantucket keeps teaching me, especially now that we're spending more of our year here, is that I actually enjoy slowing down — and that the grind of building and hustling is starting to feel less appealing than a slow, quiet life. I'm grateful to be somewhere that lets me experience that firsthand, even if I clearly still have some work to do on believing it the other nine months of the year.

We’ll be soaking up every bit of this last week on-island. I definitely have the end-of-summer blues setting in already. I’m sure a lot of you do too.

Warmly from the coast,

Meg