Seven women by the sea

I. Years ago, poet Linda Pastan wrote:

“Isn’t this what life

could be: a walk

before breakfast with the sea

opening its chapters

of water and light. . .”

It stirred up a longing I never knew I had. I’d never seen an ocean, never walked on an endless sandy beach. Oceans seemed mythical to this prairie kid.

And yet.

We were formed in water; we all started as little sea creatures, swimming in a self-contained ocean.

Our bodies are half water, and the pull toward bodies of water is strong.

The prairie was once a shallow, inland sea, and later a sea of grass.

What I’m saying is that the sea is in my blood. Yours, too.

II. We are here, at the sea, on a beautiful coast. Five mothers and two daughters.

We are here, seven women who once all lived in the same small town, long scattered to coasts or lives far flung.

Though not of my blood, they are my sisters and mothers and aunties and daughters all the same.

We lived on the prairie once, in a place tilled and tiled and shorn of trees.

The flat horizon line afforded brilliant sunsets.

Here, we walk in a fragmented pack on skinny sidewalks past the deli and the wine bar, down to the water tumbling in on itself, to the sand pounded hard by time and tide.

III. Here, too, exists a strong horizon line, but the sunsets are muted in a hazy scrim. Mist snags on the pines. We see life at the beach through a gauzy lens, but many things become clearer as we walk in the wind and the spray.

I step like a stork through the surge at water’s edge. I pick up small, dark stones, smooth as buttons.

There’s a whole world order happening here. Small shorebirds buzz the water’s edge in formation. Gulls confer with much bobbing and ducking before running headlong toward the water and lifting off.

The surf envelops my ankles, and my feet sink under the shifting sand.

IV. We cook, we eat, we laugh, we gripe (a little). We are growing older.

In her poem, Pastan tries to imagine what would happen if she “refused to leave” the beach. That’s what hooked me many years ago, a longing for a different life with different rhythms.

We aren’t refusing to leave, we seven. We know our lives are waiting for us away from the beach.

We shake off the sand. We pack, we hug, we wave goodbye. Thank you, my sisters and mothers and aunties and daughters. I carry the prairie and the sea and you with me always.

Joan Zwagerman enjoyed a great vacation on a beautiful coast.