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This Way and That

14 Monday Dec 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

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I kept missing turn-offs today as I was negotiating Lake Jackson’s crazy curved roads.  Twice I ended up taking the long route to friend’s homes. After my second roundabout, I couldn’t help laughing at myself; apparently, the absence that makes hearts grow fonder also makes memory grow fainter.

I never lost my sense of direction, but I admit to losing my local driving mojo.  Today reminded me of those first weeks of Brazosport life in the mid-80s, when I drove around town looking for a familiar landmark.  Within Lake Jackson, there are few shortcuts but many scenic ways to get from one point to another.

Lake Jackson has been written up in national publications more than once for their street names;  trees  and flowers name streets here, unless it’s one of the few that end in ‘Way.’

Most of the ‘Way’ streets take you to the heart of downtown.  This Way and That Way and Parking Way and Winding Way and Circle Way and Center Way are major downtown arteries.

Further afield, just north of town, are two more Ways.  Neither directly leads to downtown proper,  though both intersect with This Way.  Any Way is a residential street while His Way is more driveway than street.  To follow the narrow paved path of His Way lands you and your car in the local Nazarene Church parking lot.

I didn’t drive on any of the Way streets today.  But I did find my own way to a few familiar landmarks.  I was a little late of course.

The Second Day

12 Saturday Dec 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

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Eyes grow soft when gazing upon any created thing held dear.  Whether it is person or place, it doesn’t much matter.  Eyes grow greedy, drinking without thought of ever feeling sated.  Changes are looked for and found.  But soon the eye accepts the change  so that what once stood out no longer becomes discernible.

It will be just like this when I see those cherished faces of dear friends; and so it already is between me and this area I called home for most of my adult life.

Never mind that it’s a dreary gray day where horizon disappears between sea and sky.  There are no sharp clear lines today; everything my eye falls on becomes a fuzzy smudge.  I know that imaginary artist line is out there somewhere, covered by fog.  Even as my eye follows the white cap surf to the shore line, the sky seems to hover slightly above the churning water.   There’s a closed-in stuffy appearance to my ocean view today; walking out on the cottage deck is like walking into a smoke-filled dive after a night of big business.  Only the smokey fog lingers to hint to what has come before.

And what was it that came before?  It was on the second day that God created an expanse between waters and sky.  And when the separation had come, the first creation account tells that God separated the water under the expanse from the water above it — “And it was so.”  And  God called the expanse sky.

Today the expanse has slipped a bit, for a light mist falls out of the sky on me as I drive to pick up the morning papers and a cup of coffee.  And I feel so loved that my husband would transport his work site for a few days so that I can fill my lungs with salt air and reacquaint myself with the old God in the sea.

Standing before the sea shrinks me to the proper proportion.  I am small  against the  mighty created sea.   And compared to God, I sing with the Psalmist: “What are humans that you are mindful of them?”

It’s time to attend to this mass of sea that blurs into expansive misty sky on this, our second day.

“Go, go, go said the bird…”

19 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, In the Garden, Life at Home, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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There is promise hovering in the cold Oklahoma air that may soon carry us south.

I have been longing for the sight and taste of a place I called home for twenty years.  This morning, after two months of wishing, I picked up the phone-cum-magic wand to make my dream come true.  

My husband and I are not traditional ‘snowbirds, what coastal Texans fondly (and not-so-fondly) call migratories of the human kind who descend south for a winter perch.  Instead, our stay will be the barest of interludes.   We hope to steal away for a few days in Advent, during that lesser known liturgical season preceding Christmas on the church calendar.  Our arrival at Surfside Beach within this prayerful season of holy anticipation and waiting seems entirely appropriate, given that the word Advent  — which derives from the Latin word adventus  —  means “arrival” or “coming.”  

I have come to regard a certain white cottage that graces the eastside ocean front as our home away from home.  Like all beach front property, the house is built on stilt-like pilings, which makes for spacious views.  In the dark morning hours, I watch the fireball of the faraway sun shoot out of the ocean to break fast over darkness.  A little later, I watch the graceful gulls and pelicans skim the ocean surface to break fast in their own way.

I understand their taste for seafood — except for breakfast and a few pilgrimages to The Dairy Bar in nearby Lake Jackson —  it will be a seafood diet for me.  Hopefully, we’ll bring back some lovely Gulf Coast Shrimp as souvenirs.

 

There are other souvenirs to pick up and gather.  Like any familiar place that holds precious memories, a new trip to Surfside allows us to reconnect past dots of everyday life — memories of our children playing in the sand, a few sandy family picnics and even my husband’s proposal of marriage under a starry sky as we searched for Haley’s Comet.  The beach reminds me of walks on the jetty with my friend Terri, as it reminds me of all my friends in and around Lake Jackson.  Some I pray to visit.

Surfside is in the rhythm of our lives in the same way that the sun comes up  and goes down, in the way that the waves sweep in and roll out and in the way that we breathe in and breathe out life itself.  Even now I can taste salt air on my tongue and my mouth waters in anticipation. 

Surfside invites me to encounter life beyond what I can truly know, beyond the wide blue sometimes brown sea yonder.  At Surfside, I descend to the deep, where life below the surface is Real, no longer just an attractive shimmer on the surface.

It’s a good perch to watch and ponder life.  To look back and forward and in and out.  To stay still until I’m filled and it’s time to fly back home.  

“Go, go, go, said the bird:  human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”   – T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton