Why I'm glad I don't live in Florida...

...this little condo you got us is so homey that the kids are really settling into life here. As we ate lunch at our little bamboo and glass kitchen table today, Elijah made the comment, "I think I'm getting used to Florida."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He looked out the sliding glass doors and said, "...the palm trees and sand and stuff. I'm getting used to seeing it." Meaning he was not really seeing them at all anymore.

So I'm glad I don't live in Florida. Because tonight when you took us to the beach, and took me out into the waves, it felt like the ocean was giving me a mini-rollercoaster ride. And when I looked at you and saw you watching me, I asked, "What?"

"Just watching out for you," you said. I thought then how much I like being with you in a place where you have to watch out for me. And how much I like knowing that you'd easily measure up to any danger that presented itself. I don't want the sense of your strength to become ho-hum to me.

I'm glad in this sense for the kid, too, for this is where when my son watches his father dive 25 feet down to the ocean's coastal floor, and he is duly impressed. This is as it should be between a pre-pubescent son and his father. He should know of manly things for which to brag about his father, and he should glow with the camaraderie of their adventure out with the schools of tuna swimming all around them. These things should also, not become commonplace, but remain special.

Finally, I'm glad I don't live here for when I walk along the beach at sunset, the view is so unfamiliar that I don't lapse into random thoughts or--even worse--worries about life and how it moves along. The view completely captures my eye and my tongue, making me look for words beautiful enough to describe what I see. I feel like I owe it to God to make a word-song of what I see.

Folds of gold satin, trimmed with periwinkle froth, this to commemorate the waves under the setting sun...I stand and stare at the view, and my heart feels somehow larger than it was before I saw this scene. So I look for something to lock the moment into my heart, but I know I will not succeed, for I've seen such beauty before--last autumn even in the world of my spirit so large that I thought if it went on for too long a march of days it could literally kill me body. So I know the feeling is a gift that passes. Words vaguely bring back the feeling, the camera tries but still falls short. Sometimes a work of art, if the artist is really gifted, can do it; but such art is not created so often it seems now. And music. If I'd been hearing Barber's Adagio for Strings as I walked the beach tonight, I'm afraid I might have melted into the tide myself. Part of me can't imagine how I'll be able to survive such all-encompassing, multi-faceted beauty when I meet it in the next life. I'm glad my heart knows enough about beauty to wonder such a thing.

So I embrace it deeply when it is with me for the moment, which is more than I'd expect is in the hearts of the couple passing me, for they walk with glaze-eyes, trudging along in the flat, damp sand. Nor do I follow the lead of the old man going along fully dressed, chest-deep in the water, staring down and sweeping his metal detector back and forth under the water. I'm not like these natives. I walk in the wonder of one seeing the water as beauty renewing itself, and a part of me hopes I always will.