Beyond the Beach

Beyond the Beach

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When you’re at the beach it’s easy to be seduced by it, to think there is nothing else to see or do. But  there are other pleasures. The pool, for instance. I’ve spent many hours lazing by it, reading or writing, and many hours in it, as my body cools and my fingers shrivel.

And there is walking around the little village center here, where you can people-watch, pick up a salad for dinner and buy a souvenir or two.

Finally, there’s the mental vibe of the beach, which expands beyond the sand and surf into the light and the wind — into the words I write, the thoughts I think and the dreams I dream.

I guess that’s why I keep coming back.

The Eyes Have It

The Eyes Have It

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I noticed it in late March, when mask-wearing was still rare. I noticed it when I spotted a woman in the supermarket, between the dairy and meat section. 

Perhaps she had just landed some chicken, which was scarce in those days. But I think it was a gesture of simple human friendliness rather than an expression of triumph. Because it was only a simple smile. And it crinkled the edges of her eyes, fanned up in lines toward her temples, made her pupils dance.
This will pass, her smiling eyes said to me.  One day we will be beyond all this — and we best be beyond it with smiles on our faces and fellow feeling in our hearts. 
That’s the moment when I decided that in this new world … the eyes have it. 
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Puddles

Puddles

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The last few afternoons have featured big rains with dark clouds building, sheets of water falling and palm trees swaying. These storms have left large puddles in their wake, bodies of water like small ponds, making you cross the street when you’re walking to the market to pick up the salad dressing you forgot to buy an hour earlier.

The puddles mirror the sky and the clouds that created them. The images vanish when the water meets the macadam.  I skirt them at first, but then take the time to snap a shot.

Looking at it now I see how the grain of the gravel underlies the mottled cloudscape — and the upside-down palms seem like two small brooms, ready to sweep the street of rain.

Fast Walk at High Tide

Fast Walk at High Tide

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The sun is well up in the sky, the aroma of sunscreen fills the air, all the shells have been found. It’s a fast walk at high tide.

Yes, the intentions are pure. I could imagine the early rising as I took 40 more winks, could feel myself pulling on running shoes, tying the laces, tucking my hair up in the baseball cap, heading out into a still, silent world where only a few beachcombers strolled meditatively along the shore.

Instead, I found myself hours later, dodging the breakers as they edged onto the only hard sand left, crunching the dross of smashed shells and dried seaweed.

It was hot, it was invigorating. It was a fast walk at high tide. 

Kinda Sorta Like Normal

Kinda Sorta Like Normal

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It’s not like you can forget the pandemic here. I’m aware that the virus is still raging. To get here, I wore both a mask and a face shield. And when I enter a grocery store, which is the only place I enter other than my room, people wear masks.

But on the beach, which is so broad and glorious, so built for social distancing, I can walk and look and sit and stare and pretend that life is whole once again.

In other words … it’s kinda, sorta like normal.

The Beach, Again

The Beach, Again

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Being back at the beach always comes as a shock. I know that this world continues to exist when I’m not here. Its rhythms free for the taking, its palms swaying in the breeze whether I’m here to see them or not. 

But the year is long between visits, and sometimes it seems like a mirage. Oh, no, though. It is still here, with all its differences and beauties. 

It’s so lovely to be at the beach again. 

Overwritten

Overwritten

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That I’m an Annie Dillard fan will come as no surprise to anyone who glances at the title of this blog with its Dillard quotation below. It’s taken from my favorite of her books, An American Childhood. A more perfect evocation of growing up, of coming to inhabit one’s self, I do not know.

I’ve been less a fan of Dillard’s fiction. But a few days ago I picked up The Maytrees. It has a slightly standoffish quality that keeps me from fully digging in, but, like all Dillard’s works, it has lines that stop me in my tracks. Here’s a passage that did just that:

Often she missed infant Petie now gone … He fit her arms as if they two had invented how to carry a baby. … Later she washed his filthy hair and admired his vertebrae, jiggled his head in toweling that smelled like his steam. She needled splinters and sandspur spines from his insteps as long as he’d let her. Every one of these Peties and Petes was gone. That is who she missed, those boys now overwritten.

How beautifully does she say what parents feel as their children grow up. That as much as you love them, love them more each year though it seems scarcely possible, you miss them, too, miss their younger selves that flit in and out of their smiles and expressions, tantalizing just enough to let us know they’re in there still, somewhere. Thanks to Dillard, I have a new word for where they are. They are “overwritten,” stuck beneath layers like primary code.

Tomatoes!

Tomatoes!

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The tomato plant on the deck is bending from the weight of its top-heavy stalk. There are almost a dozen little tomatoes-in-the making in various stages of fruitiness. Toward the bottom of the stalk one of a trio is almost completely red. It will no doubt ripen while I’m gone next week.

Meanwhile, in what seems like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk fashion, the plant continues to climb, with clumps of tomato flowers turning, magically, into tomatoes themselves, albeit still tiny.

As backyard garden operations grow, it’s not a big one. But like any backyard garden operation it’s a reminder that much of what we eat comes from the soil — or from animals who eat things that come from the soil — not from hermetically sealed packages in the grocery store. 

Soil, fertilizer, summer sun and rain … when the combinations are right, there is growth, there is harvest — there are tomatoes on your plate.

 
Outside the Lines

Outside the Lines

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I won’t say I wrote the first over-parenting book, but I did write an early one. So I pay attention when new volumes come out on the topic.  One of the latest is Parenting Outside the Lines by Meghan Leary, which is excerpted in the Washington Post today.

Leary has her work cut out for her. The little I’ve been learning about the commercial assault on and considerable expectations of parents these days, the more amazed I am. Take the products and gadgets that are supposedly filling needs but are actually inflaming fears.

There’s something called the Owlet Smart Sock, which keeps tabs on baby’s vital signs so you can sleep in peace. Sleep in peace, that is, until baby kicks off the Owlet Smart Sock, at which point you run, heart-pacing, into the nursery to find your sweet babe snoozing in rosy good health. Of course, you’re awake for the night.

One thing I’m sure of — every parent wants the best for her child. The question is, how to achieve it. And the infuriating answer is .. we don’t really know for sure. Accepting that answer, believing in that answer, can take a lifetime.

Lighting the Way

Lighting the Way

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Walking in the dark has always appealed to me, not so much for what I gain cardiovascular-wise, but what I see when I stroll. The shimmer of TV screens, the toys abandoned in the driveway, waiting to be picked up by children in the morning.

One house I passed last night has been empty for months, and the new inhabitants are just settling in. All I spotted in the dining room was a large potted plant. Seeing the emptiness of that brightly lit room, comparing it with the full-to-bursting condition of my own house, reminded me of when we first arrived here with a six-month-old baby.

The house felt like a mistake, a far-too-roomy abode that we’d never grow into. Four bedrooms? A living room, dining room and kitchen? And a full (though unfinished) basement? We would always be bouncing around in here like three tennis balls, I thought.

Obviously, we have filled the place up, no problem, and used every nook and cranny. But that wasn’t what affected me so much last night. It was a visceral memory of that younger self, and a sudden rush of realizing how long ago that has been. It was the biggest story, and sometimes I think the only story. It was time passing … that’s all.