Ways of Seeing

Board meeting.

Tuesday afternoon I took our foster dog Koda to Wrightsville Beach. It was 78 degrees, sunny with clear blue skies. On the way there Koda hung his big greedy head out the passenger side window and slurped at the breeze.

Parking was hard to find. There were people everywhere, walking, running, strolling along gazing at their phones. There were surfers with pale, slim bodies, wetsuits hanging on narrow hips, young women hefting their boards and young men peering out at the water. There were old couples walking hand in hand, in and out of the surf, in and out of the surf, talking in that way you do when you’ve known and loved someone a long enough time. There were college girls in bikinis sprawled on blankets and college girls in bikinis tossing footballs and frisbees. There were children with brightly colored plastic shovels digging in the sand. There was music and a warm breeze and sharp points of diamonds on the ocean. It was all glorious.

Yesterday, 20 degrees cooler with rain and a heavy ceiling of clouds we went back. I saw five other people. We were all bundled up against the rising, chill wind. Overnight, the ocean had tossed itself into a slate-colored froth. The seabirds were alternately raucous and ponderous, resting a while on the sand to observe or nap or gossip, then popping up into the air for short sorties out over the troubled water looking for fish. It was low tide, and I found the beautiful, secret inner staircase to a couple of busted-open whelks and one moon snail. Koda ran along plowing his nose in the wet sand, wild with pleasure. It was all glorious.

I have struggled with what to say of late, what to write. How to seem normal in a time when our democracy is melting down. I’m unable. It’s not normal, and I won’t pretend it is. I’m registering my complaints with the people who need to hear them. That’s all I know to do.

Meanwhile, glorious is still happening, and I don’t want to miss it. I spent too many years letting grief and fear and worry steal my joy. In the words of whoever coined the phrase, “Not today, Satan.” Or any day. The days are all too precious. Too glorious.

I’m trying to hold both my firm resolve to be an active and righteously angry citizen alongside the certainty there is so much glory to behold. Those children filling their buckets with brown sand, their baby-bird shoulders warmed by the February sun. The person trudging along the shoreline under gray skies, head bent against the icy wind, a backpack slung on their back, leaving clean imprints of their shoes in the sand, moving fast so that I soon lost sight of them around the gentle curve near the jetty.

These are small moments that give me peace and that provide encouragement. To keep speaking out. To help where I can with local agencies and organizations. To pace myself and refill the well with these sips of glory that will serve to remind me the world and all the beautiful, beautiful people, all of them, all of us, and the animals and the oceans and the trees and the skies and the mountains and the rivers and the clay and the rocks and the deserts and the sweet, sweet air we breathe are all worth fighting for.

If I haven’t said it lately, thanks for being here. You are part of my glorious.