…from the mountains of VT, NH and ME to the KY side of the OH valley to Atlantic Beach in NC – yes, folks that where I’ve been in the last 10 days. It’s hard to explain how this is all happening. What an unusual summer this is! What a gift!
So for the next couple of days I’m sitting in a beach house with friends enjoying the company and the scenery. This trip came up last Monday totally by surprise. Karen was going and I couldn’t let here drive 12 hours by herself so I made the ultimate sacrifice and headed to the beach with her. Yea!
I’ve tried doing some reading but the ocean is so distracting. The waves keep calling out to me. ‘With your head buried in the book you might miss something.’ ‘What if dolphins swam by and your missed them?’ One wave yelled, ‘Look how high I am.’ Another ‘Don’t get in my way or I’ll soak you.’ (and he did.) ‘Did you see that ride I gave that surfer guy?’ ‘It’s quiet time, I’m going to be a gentle and quite as possible’. ‘You can’t go in the house now, remember your time here is limited.’ (Was that meant to be a profound statement or just a passing comment?)
Ah, Shell – and then there are the shells. We were here two years ago and I brought home a bag of shells. Plenty of shells to last a life time, so I decided not to take any home this trip in trying to be true to the effort to limit my ‘stuff’. But maybe I could take home some broken ones to appreciate. I resisted. But then there were the perfect ones…okay I can leave them for someone else, but it isn’t easy. Then I found a perfect black one that was calling my name – actually I walked past it and it started yelling at me. Okay, so now it’s sitting outside. I’m hoping to spend some time with it and then perhaps it will let me return it to the beach for someone else to fine.
The shells from two years ago – I had put them in a large vase but at Easter time I replaced them with plastic eggs (yea, I know a little tacky there). I decided, when I put the eggs away to, replace the shells one at a time when I did something significant, like stretch myself in some manner or the other – i.e. leaving more shells on the beach. When thinking about this summer I’ve decided that I can go ahead and put all the shells in the vase, I think I’ve met my personal challenge to stretch myself at least a little this summer.
The company has been wonderful – my dear friend of 32 years, Karen, her daughter (my god-child), Jessica and husband Jeremy, a couple friend of theirs and Karen’s sister in law, Lily who lives in NY. The youngsters have been a lot of fun. Us ‘older’ women are trying to ask as wisdom figures for them (yea, right – who bought the whip cream for the strawberry daiquiri). It would be nice to have Jerry here but he’ is enjoying himself in the 100 mile wilderness, trudging along the A.T. – we all make choices.
Well, the waves are calling me once again. Maybe also a daiquiri. Wait it’s only 10:23 a.m.
(BTW – I know that its prairie and not valley.)
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