on origins
Today is my parents’s 42nd wedding anniversary; this tribute piece was written in August 2013 on my last blog. In the last 11 years, I’ve learned a lot about myself and them and we’ve grown in our relationship, but this piece still holds true and I remain profoundly grateful I was gifted them as my parents.
Last Friday, my ninth day at the beach started bright and early, at dawn. My eyes opened into total darkness at 6 and I slipped past my sleeping parents and into the clothes I had laid out the night before.
Thursday night, we - my parents, Janet and Mike, and I - had arrived in Atlantic Beach a little later than we had hoped, but timed perfectly to enjoy a lazy sunset over Bogue Sound with some local beer before taking these summer babies out for celebratory dinner.
We sampled local cheese, shared a bottle of Albarino, and savored tapas with a decidedly beachy flair. I so enjoy this time in my life where I can be both an appreciative daughter and adult friend.
We have way too much fun together.
-----
The next morning, I crept down the street; the beach was still asleep and the moon nearly full, hanging heavy in the sky to my right.
It had been over eight months since my last sunrise at the beach. So much had changed since that spectacular event on Topsail Island. And yet, standing there, I was reminded that this happens every single day. No matter what's going on in my life.
That this is actually going on every hour in some part of the world.
I stood there, as she rose, my hair growing larger and more tangled by the moment, as the salty mist lifted and teased it. I walked to the water's edge, meditated on the pink reflected in the receding waves.
The sun drew higher into the sky as seven o'clock neared. I headed back to our room through the barely-roused streets and past a lone white house, appearing to blink wearily in as the early morning light reflected off its walls. I found my parents still slumbering, so I changed into my running clothes and headed out for four miles. Four miles weaving through streets with teal doors and hurricane shutters. Past the empty circle drive and a few other walkers and runners. Past gradually more and more cars as the sleepy beach town awoke. Then back towards the room with the imagined taste of fresh coffee already on my tongue. Fresh coffee and a banana before heading back to the beach to play in the sun.
-----
When I look at my folks, I see pieces of myself. She possessing high energy, long legs, and childlike laughter; he sharing his height, big hugs, and boundless curiosity. I am their eldest child, born a few days after their first wedding anniversary.
When I was in high school, my father turned to me and remarked, "I feel bad for you girls. The relationship your mother and I have is something that, the older I become, I realize may be a bit of an anomaly." I remember resenting the comment at the time.
Surely, I can find what you have, Dad.
Now I'm left to wonder.
------
Still in motion from the run, I made coffee for us to drink in our sound-side room. We all crowded onto the balcony to look out across the waving saw-grass and watch the boats depart. We readied ourselves and headed to the beach.
Mid-morning and it was already warm, but the breeze was strong out of the southwest - and we had an umbrella and beer. We sat in idle silence, they quieted by how beautiful it was and I now well-practiced in the art of slow beach days. When it grew warm, we headed into the ocean - me first, to swim up and down the shore; my equally aquatic father, next; my mother, last.
"She won't get all the way in," he said over his shoulder to me. "She's never been crazy about getting under the water in the ocean. But as we stood, she waded out - knee-deep, hip-deep, chest-deep. Squealing with laughter, jumping against the waves, gasping at the chill of the water.
I've never seen my mother like this. "Look at you! You look so happy!" I shouted inland.
"I feel like I'm twelve!" she yelled back.
And for a few moments, I saw her as she would have been then, long before she became a mother, before she met and married my father, when she was a gangly pre-teen with the big smile and crinkly eyes that she would pass on to me.
She made her way out to my father, sunglasses still perched on her face. "Here," I said, holding out my hand. "Let me take them back in."
And I headed back, leaving them in the ocean together to be what they were before Mom and Dad. When they were Janet and Mike.
-----
Later, after many more hours of sun and a long walk down the beach, we all headed back to the room to nap in the air-conditioning.
Later still, we roused gradually to freshen up, drink white wine and snack on guacamole. My father told me about the book he was reading, Brian Greene's latest work exploring parallel universes.
"One theory is that our whole universe constitutes one hole in an infinite slice of Swiss cheese, so to speak," he gestured as he spoke. "One infinite plane with infinite numbers of holes, of universes." I was reminded of my morning, of thinking about the sun rising every hour somewhere on Earth.
"Kind of makes your head spin a little, doesn't it?"
Kind of makes you feel really, really small and yet really, really big at the same time.
-----
We sat dockside that evening, enjoying a cocktail before dinner, watching the sun set. As I snapped a picture of my father holding my mother’s hand, I realized that this moment was just one iteration of the same gesture over their three decades together, a parallel moment across hundreds of thousands of moments. Well-practiced and thoughtfully automatic. I remembered my father's words from years before and I smiled wistfully.
I hope I find that. I hope it finds me. I hope I haven't missed it already.
Thunderclouds rolled in as our dinner hour approached and, as we dined, we talked about getting up to see the sun rise and then going to the local diner.
It rained briefly, spectacularly, until we got back to our hotel room, when the skies opened up and then continued to dump off and on all night. The rain beat against the sliding glass door and the wind ripped across the sound.
—-
The sun was hidden the next morning; the evening's storm clouds crowded out its rising. Its light filtered weakly pink across the sky and we huddled against an unexpected chill in the air. But what the sky lacked, the water compensated. Smooth as glass, waves rolling methodically in. The storm had wiped it clean, for the moment.
And we all sat silently together, enjoying the calm of this particular iteration of morning.
