Treasures

These pictures are from our second weekend at the beach with Drew's family, but I like them enough to post them separately. We fill our days at the beach pretty quickly; there is breakfast and a morning nap and lunch and then packing for the beach and playing at the beach and cleaning up after the beach. Then, there is an afternoon nap and reading on the porch and usually a local seafood dinner (sometimes very local, as in catch-and-eat, sometimes slightly less local, as in purchased from the seafood market next door). As the sun starts to set, we usually head back to the beach with a bucket or a bag and spend the last hour of daylight sitting in the cool sand, sifting through it with our fingers and toes, searching for seashells and other tiny treasures. But those hours in themselves are treasured far more than anything we might find buried in the sand.

Our lives have been graced with what you might call a high-energy child. Naomi runs nearly everywhere she goes, and she's always busy - physically and mentally. She seems to inhabit a slightly different state of being during our evenings on the beach, though. One square foot of sand and shell keeps her interest for a long time, as she finds wonder in each and every fragment she encounters. She goes all in, laying on her belly in the sand, getting as close as she can to the little remnants of marine life scattered under and around her. 

Drew and I agree that these moments on the quiet beach, all three of us lost in our own thoughts but also fully present in our time together, are some of the best that life has to offer. The beach simultaneously draws your attention up (to the watercolor sky), out (to the vast, churning ocean), and down (to the treasure-filled sand at your feet). Our daily lives likewise pull our attention in so many different directions, attempting to channel it through so many devices to so many problems. But unlike the tension produced by that pull, the pull of the beach asks us to slow down, to breathe in the bits that we can't possibly take in through our eyes, and to embrace the understanding that we are at once timeless and tiny. I always leave the beach with a renewed perspective, more determined to seek powerful places, more comfortable in the midst of vastness, and more respectful of the broken beauty found at boundaries. I hope our little family - my greatest treasure - continues to seek quiet evenings on the beach together and to find treasures there - whether seashells, memories, or life lessons - every chance we get.