A “few” years ago, darling Joyce introduced me to the wonderfulness of going “to the water” on New Year’s. It is meant to refresh and recharge and restart the new year.
So every year I’ve tried to make it to some water or another. For a number of my grown-up (?) years I lived on an ocean or a gulf(Atlantic (Newport), Pacific (Panama), Pacific (Monterey), Atlantic (Spain), Pacific (Monterey), Atlantic (Jacksonville), Gulf of Mexico (Tampa)), and I couldn’t imagine living inland — the mere thought was claustrophobic to me.
But when life continued to evolve, inland I had to go and it got more challenging to go to the water. Sometimes I was able to check in with a river or a lake. Sometimes it was a pond. A few times it was just the bathtub.
Nothing ever worked as well as an ocean.
Since we are here in the River City, we have an ocean at hand once again (and a river and an intracoastal canal and lakes). We forewent the river, waved at our “lake” out back, crossed the intracoastal, and ended up at the one spot by the Atlantic that we’ve just learned where to park.
Chick decided we had to go “right now” a little bit after Snowy was down for the night. “I’m not getting dolled up — let’s just GO!” So I didn’t doll up or brush my hair or anything. Dang.
It was CHILLY! The wind has been whipping up a bit around here this evening. And of course we took the little blue car and put the top down (with both heaters set for 90*). We pondered taking Charlie but weren’t sure if he was allowed. Of course when we found our spot and parked the sign said he was allowed at the hour we went. Sorry, Chuck.
We took some of the many sparklers I’d bought yesterday and the match gun with the thought that Chick would take more sparkler pictures just for fun. Uh, pictures?? What about the ‘don’t doll up’ direction? “Oh, I just put a little Bare Minerals on…” But I didn’t! oy.
We marched down in the dark towards the waves, which we could see crashing away by their white tops. We stopped where we could tell we wouldn’t be going in the water. The longer we stood there, the more stars came out overhead (shy things). Looking up and down the beach we could see lights on the various condos, etc. that lined the edge of the beach. Some still had Christmas lights on. It was calm, nice, bracing, inspiring, energizing, joyous… I could continue, I really could.
Finally we started trying to light the sparklers. I’m thinking one of the reasons these were on sale is because they are so DANG HARD to light. With a whipping wind and sudden long gusts, it was nearly impossible to make our spark, but we managed it twice for shots she took of me and once for shots I took of her. All of the pictures I took of her didn’t work — unfocused, not lit enough to see her, blurred… We used up all the ‘gas’ in the match gun and that was the end of the sparkler photosession.
She did snap a few more of us together (she is an expert holding her arm out long enough to do self-portraits), and with the flash that she used (since we weren’t sparkling), my lack of “dolling up” was extremely apparent. And I think combing my hair might have helped, too (hee hee, says the convertible girl).
It doesn’t matter – we went to the water, to the ocean, and we sent our hopes and expectations and resolves for this coming year into the boom of the crashing waves and up to the millions of stars overhead (especially the ones we could see) and for good measure to the rapidly moving lights that were the airplanes in the travel alleys far overhead — maybe they will really help spread our wishes.
With a final hug we danced our way back to the car and headed home once again, where Charles was in Charge. All was well and we are filled with love and hope.
Thank you for leaving me your thoughts!