It came up out of nowhere. The tall umbrellas, once far from the shoreline, were now nestled in water. The boat headed out had been beaten back, unable to mount it. Specks looking like ants were submerged then reappeared with screams and shouts of laughter. Eighty yards out was covered with white rushing foam as the rogue wave receded back just as suddenly as it had come. All was calm again but changed. Such is the power of the unexpected, the unknown.
I’ll miss this view. I’ll miss this place. It has changed me. Quiet has changed me. Light and air and warmth have changed me. Time, once again, has changed me.
It’s the last day of our trip to this water, this sand and this beauty. The fresh fish, our drives and our talks will soon be a jewel–a glimmer in the past. I think of the day we drove in and got lost on the cobbled roads, so narrow and busy. Fatigued from the rush to get ready, from the flight and my nerves, I found myself homesick as we searched for the turnabout that would take us in the right direction. Will Dad be okay? I worried, and ol’ Sam and our Mary?
Lines of colored clothing waved high above in the sun from windows and walls of abodes that would never be suitable in colder climates. Mechanic shops rich with oil and grease, pickups loaded up with yellow coconuts, restaurant counters waiting for service and small cloth covered tables were tucked in all around us with no concern of the view. Life is the view here, families making a living, the concern.
Up and up you drove until you said, This is it, it’s built into a cliff. Feeling jittery and unbalanced from an old fear of heights, its beauty at first went unnoticed as so much of what I now treasure once did. You looked out over the water as I slipped on my sandals over sticky hot skin and then we settled in.
I soon noticed the egg yolks are orange here. The red peppers boast a deep juicy, blood red. You noticed the beauty of the women. I noticed how life had changed the women grown older. Like me.
We have both changed, my love. We walked and we swam and we laughed and we ate. We read by the sea and we loved and we napped. Please remember, O treasured one of mine, that when what’s around you rises up like waves, as if you could be pulled down into its current with no way out, that you have a Lifeguard watching over you. And the One who made the depths from which the waves are tossed, is and will remain, the same today, yesterday and always.
Remember that as I remember the waves.
