Sunday

I’m writing this sitting cross legged on a striped blanket spread across damp brown sand. It’s funny thinking of you reading these words for the first time in Times New Roman on a screen somewhere very far away. But for me, these words are being born onto the lined pages of a weathered notebook already half-filled with prayers, poems and grocery lists, scrawled in lead from a pencil I found buried at the bottom of my purse. My daughters are playing in the surf in front of me, three wet heads bobbing in water so green it looks like it is glowing, like it’s backlit from a sun shining from below rather than above. They are threading their way cautiously towards a wide shadow deeper out, above which a flock of terns hover and dive. The birds and the shadow are a paradox of continual movement and perfect stillness, white wings shattering the boundary between sky and sea over and over again.

The shoreline to my left is empty. It follows the curve of the bay towards some high-rise apartment and beach resorts that feel far away. To my right a group of fishermen in waders are pushing their truck out of the sand where it’s stuck. Beyond them are several other families, also picnicking. It’s mostly kids in the water, mothers under sunshades or on blankets like me. Fathers standing ankle deep in the surf watching. It’s the warmest Sunday of the year so far but the water is still chilly. I told the girls not too go too far out (I’m only getting in if someone is really close to dead!). I can’t hear their voices now but I’m watching them as I write. From their movements I don’t think they can touch the bottom anymore, strong arms stroking ever further out. The older two are ferrying the youngest perched on the boogie board like it’s a palanquin.  

We’re at the beach this morning because I felt like the sea could tend to my soul a bit better than our beloved Anglican gathering could today. Soft sadness has been a close companion this week. Russell and I have been a part for twelve days many times before but it’s felt more bleh this go around – probably because he has to turn around and do it again next week. (Which I feel the need to say, was no one’s first choice. War has a tendency of screwing up everyone’s best laid plans and tweaking a travel schedule is the least of many concerns.) But I both actively miss him and pre-emptively miss him, a terrible combo.

It’s also the time of year when so many of my peers have parents flying in for end of school stuff, grandparents coming in to see the musical and graduations and the kick off to summer. It’s so beautiful and brings me very real joy. But, a particularly sadness that I generally keep locked away like a family heirloom – protected, not worn – begins to knock gently on the inside of its sealed treasure box when I hug my friend’s beautiful mother. Something asking to be let out. And I don’t know if what I feel in those moments is the thing inside the box, knocking, or the awareness that even if I wanted to open the box, I have no idea where I’ve put the key.

And then, I’ve got a freaking tooth problem. Yes, an embarrassingly small thing in light of war and terminal illness. But as long as I’m just writing this in an old notebook on the beach, let me just admit honestly: I feel like crap about it. Some crunchy woo-woo wellness person that I like says we store our grief in our hip sockets. I’ve also read we hold trauma in our vagus nerve. So I’ve decided that I must store shame in my teeth. Why else do I get a toothache and then immediately start brewing on all the people I’ve let down. On what an imposter I surely must be. Does anyone have stress dreams about their teeth falling out of their head? I was in enough pain on Tuesday that I did my three least favorite things all at once (Talk on the phone, in another language, to a dentist) and made an appointment. And apparently I have a broken root up in my gum under an old crown. So dental surgery seems to be in my near future. Sadness.

I think a new role in our organization is a part of the weight in my heart too. And this is confusing because it is a level of responsibility that I’m excited about. Something I think I’ll be good at. That I feel led to by the Spirit. But it comes with newness. And that newness hovers over my bed as a shadowy figure at night and whispers unkind things. Things that I think lead to dreams about teeth falling out.

So all that to say, over breakfast, I suggested the beach instead of church to three shocked and delighted bedhead girls. We read the daily lectionary (Acts 11 – Peter using the “but it’s not Biblical!” line on a God who keeps blowing our minds with how big this thing really is), communed over quinoa crackers and expired grape juice as mother and daughters, (sisters), then grabbed sandwiches and towels and drove to the edge of the city.

Gammarth beach is not the most glamorous spot on the Med. The broken glass and occasional pile of industrial waste used to bother me a lot more than it does now. But really, there’s almost no way to tarnish the majesty of this spot. Sitting here, looking out at this water, this curve of the coastline, I imagine all the Amazigh, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Arab and French that have taken in this view in the millennia before me. People have been soaking this salty air for a long time. And I think we all must have felt some of the same things. An erosion of our sadness. Maybe also our fear.

Something in my peripheral vision catches my eye. An old man has come out of the small dunes on my left and is arranging his belongings next to him on the sand. He stands facing the sea for a moment, Eastward, and I watch him watching whatever it is he is watching for a moment. The birds maybe. Or my girls? Then he bends at the waist, hands to his knees. He kneels, face to the sand. He’s praying. Each movement of the rakat is much longer than I have seen it practiced at the mosque. He is face down for a long time. Then he rises to kneeling, and again is still a long time before returning to standing. Over and over again he moves through his prayers. A completely traditional form practiced in an untraditional way. Long, slow, solitary prayers by the sea.

My attention is drawn back to the water as the girls’ voices re-enter my sphere of hearing. They are wading in, bright and excited, the boogie board flapping behind the youngest like a kite as they splash to shore. Fish, they are squealing. Thousands of tiny silver fish. Just there. And the birds all around us, just diving and eating. They swam over the top of the board, they were dropping out of the sky. There were so many birds and fish! Mama, the fish!

It’s pure magic. Like literal magic. Something completely new to their experience. A little scary, out there treading water with living things swirling above and below, flying and swimming and falling and jumping. But magic.

As they turn to run back into the waves, I am suddenly bowled over by the sheer bounty of it all. The overwhelming more-than-enoughness. With my vaguely throbbing jaw, alone on my beach blanket, I can’t say thank you enough. The husband I feel like I can’t live without. The living saints I have for parents who are deeply connected at every turn of my life. The fact that a tooth extraction is likely the worst physical thing to happen to me this year, (and done in a place with amazing medical care no less). Work that I would give my life to over and over again. (Reading those verses in Acts this morning – yes Peter, I see you. Who am I to stand in the way of the Living God. The world needs to hear these stories!) And the people I get to do it with. That riot of proto-women squawking in the water (now one is cuddled next to me, rippling the rim of her paperback with her wet body). It’s mind blowing.

All is well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

A thousand old metaphors that I can reach out and touch today – sands on the shore, birds of the air, as far as the East is from the West, the depths of the sea, more than enough fish.

I should be on my face in the sand too. We’re on the brink of everything. I dive and I splash down to eat, over and over again.