Synchronized

July 18, 2016

The last guest left and I packed them into the car, with overnight bags, and beach towels, thinking I am probably forgetting my swim suit. I will have snacks for the car, beverages, sweaters and jeans if it gets chilly at night, extra outfits, extra sets of pajamas, stuffed animals, but I arrive – where ever I arrive and realize – I forgot my (fill in the blank essential).

The days go slow but the years fly by I heard him say. Not at the beach I thought, with the ocean breeze and salt air, so palpable, so dense that you breathe it in, take it into your lungs, accept it there, and exhale, merging with it. Salt in the air, salt in the water, salt like our tears, like our sweat. Really what is there that separates us from this world – there is nothing I tell you. And with the gulls crying, and ocean waves crashing the days go fast, and you look up to realize the lifeguards have ceremoniously blown their whistle noting their departure, and are dragging their stands to the dunes.

Like the sunset I watched from from the roof deck, with my oldest and dearest friend. It seems to take forever she said, and then suddenly it’s gone. The moon to our right rising above the ocean, the sun to our left descending into the bay. And isn’t all of life like this. Us suspended on some equator, balanced on a latitude and longitude, only we don’t realize it. A perfect line between dusk and dawn, between the ocean and bay, the cooling moon, the heat of the sun. And we rush and pack, and complain about traffic, and it feels like moving mountains to leave your house, and then you are on a roof deck, at sunset balanced, poised. And all the world breathes between morning and night. And you realize, your whole life was this synchronized, this mathematically pure, only you never realized it. Until now.