I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

It feels like a quintessential American experience, taking your kids to the beach.

I remember trips to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Ocean City, Maryland when I was young,

road trips in the family minivan, because it was more affordable to get a family

of five to the coast by car than by plane. My first flight wasn't until I was 20 years old,

but that's another story for another day. Some years, instead of ocean trips,

we would drive north a couple of hours to Sandusky, Ohio, and stay on Lake Erie. We could swim

there, build sandcastles, and eat saltwater taffy.

These memories are so clear in my mind.

Eating fried clams, collecting shells, and, hilariously, the time my dad wore his money clip into the lake and the waves carried it away along with all of our

vacation cash. Well, it's funny now. I've taken my kids to Holden Beach, North Carolina, a few

times. They've been to the beach as toddlers and as teenagers.

Yes, we had fried clams and saltwater taffy. Yes, we collected shells. The American beach

vacation experience is pretty much the same for them as it was for me 40 years later.

Today's poem took me right back there and reflected my own experience back to me in a way that

helped me see it differently. That's the power of a good poem.

Vacation by Sarah Moore Wagner

At the Carolina coastline, the sea laps up to the sand in great gulps.

I want to burst on this beach, be remade as Osiris. Instead, I put my children to bed sticky with salt, with bits of shell

hidden in the follicles of their hair.

In the morning, the radios are all

playing some tired country song

...