sea salt

(Photo courtesy of: Marie Gabrielle ) My parents didn't remember under which weeping willow my father proposed to my mother, forty years ago on the Public Garden in Boston.  To prove that he's not a jerk, my dad listed off several of their early dates: to the movies to see The Graduate , dinner at the top of the Prudential Center, a day trip to Cape Cod.  "Do you remember when you said 'I love you'?" I asked. "Yeah, three or four times a day," my father replied. "No, but when?  Where?  The first time?" "I don't remember." "Mom?" She laughed.  "I don't remember, either.  One of those things you think you'll always remember." I was disheartened.  I remember the proposal like it was yesterday.  The jeans, the red striped shirt, the Styrofoam cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, the cold sand under our feet because April in Boston is still not beach weather.  I remember the "I love you...

(Photo courtesy of: Aram Terchunian, Geotimes.org) I said yes on a sandy beach on April 10. The sand was smooth and soft under our feet, the tide was calm, the sun shone. It was an easy beach day, and an easy decision. Yes. Every day requires a new decision, even though my mother is handling most of the arrangements, so I am constantly in a state of answering, "I don't know," or "No," or, "Yes." I like Yes; a decision made, an item checked off the list, a step closer to the day, to every day after that. I said yes on April 10, but I'd been saying it for 730 days. Yes when things were new, easy, and carefree. Yes when things were familiar, tough, and unpredictable. Yes when we fell, yes when we stood again, tired and sore, yes as our wounds healed, yes when the Spring made everything new again. I said no on April 12 when my students asked me to read what I'd been writing. It was a warm, sunny day, and I took my English Composition...

< Photo courtesy of Kristine Kainer Art > We walked the beach on Saturday.  Spring was tangible as the sun beat down, warming our skin, and we smiled at the other Bostonians who had crawled out of their winter caves.  For the first time in many months, the city was cheerful, and the people happily shed their coats for new layers of sweat, t-shirts, and sunscreen.  We were our real selves again, ready to grow and adapt to the coming season. * We picked up shells.  Each shell had to be considered carefully; we didn't want any that were broken, or stained, or had any traces of the organism that had lived in the shell.  We compared them side by side, left most on the sand, and held onto the ones that were smooth, white, and clean.  One we threw back into the ocean, a broken shell with the organism spilling out, covered in flies.  We felt it should die in the ocean; the empty shell would wash back onto the beach in its own time. * Pity...

Winthrop is not known as a surfing community.  We have the ocean, beautiful and active, but it is cold, and the waves are not remarkably big, except during storms.  We're no California. This morning I went for a chilly run along the beach.  It was a gray morning, and the low cloud cover swallowed up the tiny orange flash of sun at the edge of the horizon.  A thin stripe of pink stretched between the clouds and the ocean, and the water was calm.  Seagulls whined as they trolled the beach for food, and a black Labrador ran in and out of the surf.  I haven't seen my iPod since the first week after my move to the new apartment, so I've been running to the tune of the sea, the wind, the gulls, the "good morning"s of other runners, the cars, the stomp of my feet as they hit the sidewalk.  Strangely, opening my ears has allowed me to see better, my vision constantly directed to the subtle noises of life around me. As I jogged south towards Po...

This morning the beach was gone.  High tide and a weekend of storms in New England forced giant slaps of ocean to the shore, covering the sand and splashing over the height of the seawall.  One wetsuit-clad surfer paddled around in the violent waves, but the rest of us walked along the sidewalk, sometimes shielded by the seawall, sometimes getting sprayed or doused as stories-high waves leapt over, bringing rocks, seaweed, and sand to the street.  Rocks collected between the cars parked along the seawall, and we shivered in our coats and hats as we picked up a few stones, to remember the day the ocean spoke. It said, "Stop condescending me.  I'm not just beautiful, calming, and picturesque - I'm alive, and I am restless." To prove its life, and power, and force, and choice, it threw things back on the beach that had once been thrown in: a sneaker, a child's shoe, dozens of pieces of Styrofoam, and several mangled lobster traps.  It didn't ...

This weekend I met a poet. I met him in Concord, where I had gone to hear the poetry of one of my co-workers. It was a quintessential fall day in New England: we sat on a blanket, wrapped another around us, and ate pecorino cheese and pepperoni slices on ciabatta bread as yellow, red, and orange leaves blew across the lawn of the Old Manse (www.oldmanse.org). Even in the sunlight it was chilly, but no use complaining - winter will be here soon. The poet told me that Sylvia Plath lived in Winthrop for several years of her life, and penned "Point Shirley" for the part of Winthrop where her grandmother lived.*  I am not very familiar with Plath's poetry, but as a writer I am mysteriously affected by the knowledge that she once lived where I do now. It's not that I think Main Street is haunted, or that the rocks on the shoreline hold unspeakable secrets of the true Sylvia Plath, or even that her grandmother's house (which is still standing) will inspire me to wr...