We have spectacular mornings. The sun rises with a deep golden hue and crawls lazily, heavily on the tall Loblolly Pines. A gentle heat seeps into everything and animates the day slowly, like a young child blowing up a balloon, or an inner tube for a ride down a river. The song birds begin just before dawn, ever mindful of sleeping beasts, careful only to sing just enough to carry dreams deeper and early risers with reverie. Tanagers, Blue Birds, Cardinals, Titmice, Chickadees, Wrens, Flycatchers, all reach an harmonious crescendo come breakfast time. Wildlife of every conceivable variety: Great Blue Heron, Red Tailed Hawks, Fox, Canadian Geese, Snakes, Turtles, and on and on...
By the afternoon, distant thunderheads, several miles high, trundle and morph into fantastical shapes and push breezes through new green leaves in ancient trees. The heat is only a harbinger of Summer fury, in its infancy now, but we can feel it-climbing out of it's crib and testing the latent powers it holds. Summer will be hot and humid. But we have that time tested, age old stand by, ensuring a consistent civilized nature: The ocean.
A mere three hours drive, the eighty degree waters, the lukewarm tide pools, the huge swath of beach sand, the sea oat forested dunes, the tickle of worn boardwalks and piers, festooned with crusty locals fishing for dinner. The occasional treasure; a shark's tooth, an intact conch, deep blue sand glass...and the companion of the wave's metronome measure-the lure of instant bliss. One, two, three...dive and surface reborn.
There is a great deal of that here, for me especially. I feel reborn into a world I am deeply familiar with, but each day seems new like a foreign country. The feeling I've only just arrived imbues the time with the same magical aether which permeates one's arrival to a new world. New smells, alive senses, sharp eyes, unknown people...everyone a potential friend. And now, this is Home.
Tallulah has settled in. She sleeps now, on my chest, wrapped in a comfortable cloth origami tying her to my body. Her weight comforts me, and as she gets heavier, I get stronger. She has begun to reach for the things she wants, and it all ends up in her open mouth. She looks like she is trying to taste the world. I remember discovering, perhaps at age four or five, that by touching objects with my tongue, I could instantly discern their composition-glass, stone, metal, plastic. Like an oral oracle, the taste and texture were unique. The temperature, exact. And I was always right. I imagine Lu doing that with everything new, the air, a toy, her foot...
Five Happiness, content, rests its head on your shoulder, as if to say, "I want to be still, and let the world, this new world, swirl about me...you are a rock and I hold on..."
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