Liquid jewels

Its been a long time, I know.  Two things happened.  I got burnt out and I started working on some things that were really important to me (family history)- so this blog got pushed aside.  But now, my Jess has gone off to college, and I want to connect her to the rest of us in a way that only a blog can convey.  So this post is for Jess . . .

The water was the color of emeralds today. . .

The girls were swimming,  I was on the beach.  Near the shoreline, the water was a sandy, frothy, tumultuous mess, but beyond the wavebreak, it was a pure and perfect emerald green.  When a wave would crest and take the girls up with it, so that I could see their forms suspended in it, for one fraction in time, they looked frozen in a brilliant, glassy, liquid gem. . .

Then the wave would collapse, and send a crashing thunderous surge toward the shore.  For one heart-stopping moment, the girls would disappear completely, and then their heads would come bursting through the surface, their shouts and laughter rising above the roar.

Over and over, hour upon hour, I watched them rise up, disappear, resurface, rejoice.  Sometimes I would close my eyes and my mind would drift with the clouds.  I was happy and peaceful laying there under the ironwoods.  One day, just before Jesse left for school, all five of the kids went to the beach, and with a hatchet and some ingenuity, they built this little hut.  I sat in it, laid in it, and dozed in it for three hours while the girls were out there in the waves.  

 When I finally called them to come on in, no one was in much of a hurry to leave.  

This was our walk home:

First we had to stop and ride the waves on the sand

Then we had to look at our favorite mossy rocks

 Then we had to skip stones

All along the way, I was feeling grateful for the ocean, and for the joy and vitality it infuses into our lives.  I was also feeling the change in our lives, that something was missing, that things weren't going to be quite the same from here on out.  It was a bittersweet walk home.  I miss my girl, but I'm feeling peaceful about her being where she is, that its right, and that things are going to be good, in a new and different way.

The ocean is a gem- a brilliant, changing, fluid gem- and so are our lives.  Sometimes we rise up, and sometimes we go under, but there is always beauty and change.  And in the end, if we keep stroking, we resurface and rejoice.

The ocean is a gem, and so's my Jess.  Just keep stroking.  I love you.