I couldn’t find comfort, it was cold everywhere, the windows letting in frigid air through worn out panes. Winter was never my season but never did I pray for it not to be. How can one wish for summer knowing that this is the way that days go? You can’t fight the seasons. Something like pain tore through my heart as I looked at my garden, overgrown, unattended to, dry and brown. But atop the rose bush that seemed never to notice seasons, blooming mightily always, two tight buds that never had a chance to open, caught my eye each day. Life was not to be for them but sometime they would be part of the living for other blooms, in some way, deep in the mulch of sad endings and new starts. All is not lost. If we don’t keep moving and growing, though, the winters will stop us cold. Spring always comes and I know this even as I doubt it.
My fingers look older in the cold. No hand cream will ever restore them; these hands that have held onto everything that I could. Years of clasping, fixing, tending, caressing, touching and pushing my hair out of my eyes, the hands of a mother, a nurse, a lover. Hands that have been clutched in pain and also in prayer; my hands clenched in a fist behind my back. Cold hands, warm heart, it’s true, more days than not. For that, I’m grateful.
It’s been so long since my soul knew peace. It was for sure not a January day. The children were still sleeping as I pulled on my white swimsuit. I stopped to look in the mirror and I felt pretty that summer morning; almost tanned against the pale ivory one-piece. The tide was perfect and such a miracle that the beach held only one on such a day. I walked the length of it, my face to the sun. I was strong, lithe, even. I thought briefly of the Tab commercial.
The cancer was part of my past, as hard as that was, but easier still, especially underneath the violet pinkish sky of that stolen moment. I lounged on a cotton forget-me-not blue comforter, curled on my side, free and unspeakably comfortable on this bed of ocean sand. Laughing to myself, I was glad that no one had seen me carry the boogie board with the shark in sunglasses on the front to my place in the sun. I grabbed the cord and ran with it to the shoreline, dunking first in the waters of my home, the coldest water of the South Shore. Mermaid-like, I dove in, kicking my tail, curving my back and swirling upright under the water to smooth my long hair from my face as I came back up. Laughing out loud, I straddled the board, stretched out, holding the top of it in a hug as I lay my head down. Closing my eyes, I floated, hearing only the gentle lapping of the waves and the beating of my heart.
I let go, completely, completely, completely. There was not a worry, not one.
I drove home in my wet suit without my flip-flops, my sandy toes slipping dangerously off the brake pedal. I pretended that it was an open air Jeep instead of a sensible green minivan. I was the Gidget of Minot Light. And my smile, brighter than the beachy sun that day, woke the loves of my life, as I walked back into my home. The summer light always brought out the best in this life-giving place. I made their breakfast whispering the three words that embraced me in the salty waters of my contentment, “Thank you, God.”
