Chicken Soup for the Beach Lover's Soul (3 page)
CALIFORNIA
Francis Beach, Half Moon Bay
1
UNDER THE
BOARDWALK:
ON LOVE AND LEARNING
TO LOVE, COMPANIONSHIP,
AND FRIENDSHIP
T
ell me thy company and I will tell thee what
thou art.
Cervantes
They walked along the shore,
arm in arm, hands entwined.
Pressed in warm, wet sand,
their footprints left behind.
It was their special time together,
on the beach at the end of the day.
Enjoying the beautiful sunset,
watching young children play.
Their heads are close together
as they plan their life ahead,
his arm goes around her shoulder
as they decide it's now time to wed.
She raises her face upward,
as if to receive a kiss,
a look of joy in her eyes,
as she dreams of wedded bliss.
He pulls her very close to him,
promising to keep her from harm,
to provide a safe haven for her,
where she'd be loved, safe, and warm.
They walk off into that beautiful sunset,
arm in arm, their hands entwined,
as the tide creeps upon the shore,
erasing all those footprints left behind.
Tomorrow they will again return,
their path to trace once more,
leaving more footprints behind
on that sun-drenched gulf shore.
Pamela Gayle Smith
I
t's all emotion. But there's nothing wrong with
emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational;
we are emotional. When we are on vacation,
we are not rational; we are emotional.
Frank Luntz
“Look up, over there,” David said, with a seriousness in his voice that caught my attention.
“Where? What?” I asked, diverting my gaze from the sand at my feet, where I combed for seashells.
He pointed toward the water, a whole ocean of water, endlessly rolling toward the shore in dense waves.
“Watch there,” he said, pointing to a specific spot.
Nothing looked out of the ordinary to me. “What am I looking for? Did you see something?”
David shook his head. “But wait,” he said, reaching for my hand.
And so I stood there on that Carolina beach, next to my friend, my beloved husband of twenty-five years, holding his hand, waiting, watching with him in anticipation of something very special.
When do a man and woman really fall in love? During a first dance, a first kiss, the first time they share souls? When they make up after their first fight? After their hundredth fight? Each morning when they wake up, side by side, to the promise of a new day? Or is it when they tumble into bed at night, exhausted but content from the responsibilities and accomplishments of supporting and raising a family? Maybe when an illness or brush with death has taught them that life is a sacred gift and so very fleeting? Or perhaps it's each and every time their hearts make a connection. . . .
The roar of the ocean filled our ears, the salty spray of the water caressed our faces, and the wind rustled our hair as our eyes scoured the water. Then, just to our right, coming into the line of our peripheral vision, something crested briefly at the top of a wave and then dipped into the recess. Moments later, it crested again. A dolphin! No, two dolphins! The pair swam side by side, riding the waves and paralleling the beach.
We laughed out loud, giddy like children. Only once before, years ago at Virginia Beach, had we seen dolphins swimming in their natural habitat. What a treat this sighting was! I turned to David. “Had you seen them coming?”
“No,” David said with a sheepish grin.
“Then how'd you know they'd be there?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Something just told me to look up.”
I gazed at my husband. This wasn't the first time something inexplicable (a whispering heart or intuition, perhaps) had made us look up or away, or take one path and not another. I've learned not to question some things in life, but rather offer thanks on their behalf, as now: the gift of standing on the beach in the afternoon sunshine, holding my husband's hand, and watching the dolphins. I don't know if they were lifelong mates, as David and I, but in that instant, they were together, just the two of them, journeying through their life in the water, as were David and I, on the land. . . .
I fell in love with David the first time we slow-danced, our tenth-grade year, and again a year later when we shared a warm kiss after walking together on a cold winter's eve. I fell in love with him the first time I watched his eyes crinkle when he laughed, and even more deeply when he was not ashamed to let me see him cry. We rarely argue anymore, but I swear I fall in love with him all over again whenever we kiss and make up. Where could a woman find more love for a man who has awakened each morning of his married life, and, without a single complaint, provided a living for his family? Seven years ago, when I thought I saw him take his last breath during a serious illness, I never loved him so much as I stood in the hospital corridor and pleaded with God not to take him from me just yet. But today, I fell in love with him all over again as our hearts made another connection, another memory. . . .
David and I continued our walk along the beach. We watched the dolphins journey up the coastline, bobbing in and out of the waves, until we could see them no longer.
Was it random that David had taken the day off from work? That we'd decided to run away to the seaside for a few hours while our children were in school, and it just happened that, as we walked along the beach, two dolphins swam northward? I think not. I believe the universe conspires to give us gifts, both large and small, to confirm that we are on the right path and that all is as it should be. Our job is simply to remain available and awareâand stay open to the connections.
Tracey Sherman
Sometimes, a walk on the beach can change your life. And sometimes, it can happen far from home, on a foreign shore. Disappointed with love, a young woman left her native Switzerland and arrived in England, hoping to learn English and to forget. I left my native Massachusetts, wanting to know more about the land of my grandfather, hoping perhaps, to remember. We both settled in a small English seaside town with a view of the ocean (with one's neck stretched out the window). Walking along the lonely sea one evening, we met, and eventually we fell in love. We spent several weeks together until I returned to New England, unsure what would become of this tender romance, but sure of my deep feelings for this stranger on the shore.
Hoping to decide what to do, I rented a small seaside cottage in the winter on Cape Cod. I spent long walks on the deserted beaches, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the ocean, while on the other side of the Atlantic, a Swiss girl in England did the same. One day, as I strolled a lonely shore, I was approached by an elderly woman who spoke with a foreign accent and was about to change my life. I told her about the young woman I had met and about my uncertainty over what to do and was intrigued with her story: she had emigrated from Italy after the war and had faced a number of hardships, including the language, the cultural adjustment, and homesickness. Through it all, she knew it was right, because of one thing: the love of a man, a young American she had met in Europe. As our conversation ended, she grabbed my arm, reached down for a seashell, and said: “Be like the ocean, Arthur. It always knows what it is called to do in life without anyone telling it. We can too if we can remember something.” She paused, looked away for a second, then turned back to me and whispered as softly as the rushing waves, “Listen to your heart,” and she pressed the seashell into my hand.
I followed her advice. Today, I live in Switzerland, a country without a beach. But my wife and I spend time each year on the shores of Cape Cod or England, where we walk together, holding hands, many years later. Often, I turn my collar to the stiff Atlantic breeze, place my hand in the jacket pocket, and find a twenty-five-year-old seashell. Be like the ocean.
Arthur Bowler
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The woman on the beach changed my life.
After several months of staying in touch mostly by writing letters,
I heeded the woman's advice. I listened to my heart and traveled to
Switzerland to be with the Swiss girl I had met on the English
shore. My wife and I have been together ever since.
When our four children were young, we took our first vacation to Daytona Beach, Florida. I remember how in awe of the scenery I was when we entered Florida, the beautiful Sunshine State. It was much different than we were accustomed to in our homeland state of Illinois.
The palm trees stood tall and regal, and the tropical flowers among the lush greenery made me think we had arrived in a location much akin to paradise.
Arriving in Daytona, I savored my first-ever glimpse of a beach; I fell in love with the ocean rolling in from somewhere out in the deep.
As our week provided unrelenting pleasures, I came to love scanning the sand along the water's edge for seashells, small sea critters, and other possessions brought in and deposited as treasures at my feet.
I waded out into the water, up to my shoulders, and scanned the water's floor with my feet, looking for assets transported from other lands by the turning of the tides.
Our children sat daily in the sand, constructing castles and forts, only to watch the waves carry off their fantasies to lands where only God, visionaries, and fairy-tale dreams could foretell what lay beyond the present.
Like a greased baby bottom, we stayed covered and protected from the rays of the sun. Yet my husband, whose feet had been confined for years beneath dark dress coverings, was shocked at the introduction of the sun intensified by the sand as he walked along the beach. Soon his feet took on the appearance and painful distress of trapped lobsters.
I had not known the power water possessed, beyond what came through copper piping back home in Illinois. I stood mesmerized as waves in their might rolled over themselves, again and again carrying me with them into the future where dreams lay and memories are collected.
Our children stood, leery of the ocean's imposing authority, fearful of the bashing abuse, petrified of yielding, but determined to step out to conquer the strength of its deep currents. They soon overcame, triumphant over the insults inflicted upon them; they took their stance and tasted the salty rewards.
At night we walked the abandoned beaches, looking out at the moon reflecting off the blackness and listening to the tide bringing in more treasuresâwhat would dawn reveal buried beneath a footstep? What creatures would we find trapped behind, gasping, searching for a lost loveâthe depths of the sea?
Soon our vacation came to an end, our days swallowed up in seven rolling tides. Seven days of paradise blissfully came to an end, carried away and stored as future treasures, memories never to be forgotten.
That vacation has been many years ago and our children are all grown; their children are now learning the beauty and might contained within great bodies of water. They are finding pleasures untold and seeking treasures of their own. They are forming their own love affair with beaches and casting upon the waters their own dreams and visions. They are storing away albums of memories, visual pictures for lifelong memories.
