This week I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mom, who was visiting Coronado.
“So on Tuesday,” I said, “we’ll be at the nursing home until about 10:45, and then we have to be at the Bluewater Boathouse at 11…”
“Wow,” my mom said, interrupting my train of thought. “That’s amazing. That you can plan to be from one place to another in just 15 minutes. That could never happen in DC, you know.”
We both laughed and shook our heads. Quietly, I shuddered at the memory of the DC traffic, the endless red lights on the highway in between my house and my parents’, and the mandatory 30 minutes of driving just to get from one store to another.
I am so glad to live in a place where I can walk or bike to everything I need in about 15 minutes. This is not a privilege that my family and I take lightly.
Eight months ago, when we were looking for houses in San Diego, we knew my husband’s work would be in Coronado. We already loved Coronado, but the housing prices are steep for a young military family. Since we also like the plaid-wearing, beer-aficionado crowd that populates North Park and Kensington, we looked at many houses in those neighborhoods. We loved a lot of them. We could buy a house there. We could have chickens in our backyard!
But my husband would have to drive 20 minutes to and from work every day.
Twenty minutes. What’s twenty minutes in the grand scheme of things? Not much. You can blow twenty minutes just checking Facebook every couple of hours.
But instead my husband could spend those twenty minutes commuting by bike to work (10 minutes each way!) or walking out of work to have a twenty-minute picnic lunch with his family on the beach just a stone’s throw from his office.
How many times in life do you get a commute like that?
We chose to pay more in rent to live in Coronado, but the benefits of living here far outweigh the financial sacrifice. On the point of a short commute alone, here are a few things my family has enjoyed most since moving to Coronado:
1) More time together as a family. This is a no-brainer, but with a 10-minute bike commute, my husband can often be home for lunch and is always home for dinner. Because his work requires him to travel a good deal, I’m grateful we’re maximizing his time at home instead of losing some of it on the highway. I really do like our car, but I am so glad our whole family spends so little time in it.
2) Less stress. As a young mom, the whole kids-in-the-car thing stresses me out. Just getting kids out the door — dressed, shoes on, strapped into car seats, with empty bladders and full bellies — takes a lot more coordinating than I ever imagined. I love watching them climb into the stroller themselves instead, stopping whenever we need to, and moving at a pace that allows for safe distractions. And I’ve heard there’s some great benefit to being outdoors and walking and breathing fresh air, too… right?!
3) Living life fully. It’s ironic that I find moving more slowly actually helps us get more done. “More done,” though, is relative to the family, though. With a young family, we prioritize enjoying our neighborhood, stopping to talk to our friends, being outside with our kids, and maintaining a healthy, active lifestyle for ourselves. So choosing a slower pace by walking and biking around Coronado truly helps us accomplish more. We are living life to the fullest for us.
Like many current residents of this emerald isle, our home in Coronado is temporary. Our relatives live back east, and we’re at the military’s beck and call for the foreseeable future. We know these days won’t last forever.
So we are savoring them. We are living them with both feet on the ground every day, with thankfulness.
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“Coronado Living” is a weekly column written by one of eCoronado.com’s staff writers, Becca Garber. She writes about choosing simplicity and practicing hospitality with her family at home in Coronado. You can read more of her writing on her blog, BeccaGarber.com.
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Becca Garber
Staff Writer
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