Time for a Sea Change?
July 26th, 2010There’s something about the sea that seems to call to our deeper essence. Being a writer who loves to read, I of course had to pair our trip to the beach this year with a book to match the mood. Forget Summer in Tuscany or The Glass Castle − I instead brought along a copy of A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson.
In this book, Anderson leaves behind life as she knows it for a year in solitude in their family’s Cape Cod cottage. Although I had family with me and four days instead of a year, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from re-filling my cup, if even just a splash. I was parched and I knew it.
When we arrived, the Texas coast was still spinning from Hurricane Alex, which had hit the weekend before. Instead of blue sky and beach, waves reached all the way to the boardwalk. With no beach to comb and no car to roam (we had borrowed our in-laws van and it had broken down in the line for the island’s ferry), I was forced to begin transitioning from “do” mode to “be” mode.
I spent hours on the balcony, watching the slightly comical and gawky pelicans fly by, inhaling the thick, salty air, and watching the storm clouds changing like a kaleidoscope over the water. My mind slowed as my heart opened.
The weather finally cleared halfway through the trip and we bundled chairs and umbrellas and headed for
the thin slice of beach. As the heat increased, I happily melted into my chair with my book, adventuring with Joan as she retrieved the bits of her that had been lost in the shuffle of family and a long-term marriage. Then I’d cool off by floating on an inner tube just beyond the breakers with my 15-year-old daughter, just like I did as a girl, bobbing on the water as clumps of seaweed loofahed my legs. On shore, my oldest daughter giggled as clams tickled her hands, burrowing into the mound of sand she held. My husband shredded layers of work stress like snake-skin as he stood at the water’s edge.
By the time we packed up our coolers and threw sandy clothes into bags the next day, my breathing was deeper. I felt myself touching that inner ocean of creativity I dip into when I write – and live. I could only imagine what a longer trip − and perhaps one by myself − might produce.
So this summer, I invite you to slow down and take your temperature. Are you feeling deeply connected to your inner source of nourishment, or afloat? Has your writing been stalled as the tides of life take you in directions not of your design? Joan Anderson took a year by the sea, I took four days… what about you?
