The thing about the ocean, maybe, is its limitlessness. At the water’s edge it extends away from us on three sides, uninterrupted by landmark or construction. Well, maybe a fishing trawler sits for awhile in the blue or, if we’re lucky, a sailboat picks its white way across the horizon. But these are both notable for their impermanence: they will be gone soon enough.
I think more than this, though, is the color. I worked on it with my watercolors yesterday (that long-ago abandoned attempt at visual art– my sketchbook contains the efforts I last made in 1996), trying to find the color of the ocean. Slate gray, Holland blue, peacock green. But with none of these could I recreate the gradations of color that God makes: the frothing foam, the green-brown where the sand is stirred up at the shore, the nameless bluish-green that melds, at some far-distant point, into a fair and concentrated blue that ultimately makes a seam with the sky. And over all of this, the unexpected white that appears and disappears as quickly as it comes. I don’t get tired of looking at it.
Last night, Emma Grace asked if it was Sunday. I had to think before I gave my answer, “No, Tuesday,” and together we chuckled because, for this week, the day doesn’t matter. Every day is Sunday, every day is Saturday, every day is no day at all. We are hemmed in by our arrival and departure here at the beach, but nothing else contains us. Our schedule arises from necessary nuture, almost agrarian in its awareness: breakfast when we get up, which is sometime after the sun; lunch after some time at the beach, when the sun has reached its height, and then we stay indoors for awhile, just to keep out of the heat; supper when it’s ready and then another stroll in the waning light out on the beach again, the children playing in the tidal pools and rivers that are carved into the sand.
“Are you enjoying your school-free days?” asks Carolyn in an e-mail. I finished my work there less than a week ago. I cleaned out my desk, went through my files, locked things in cabinets and said a quick farewell to the dark and empty room, silent except for the ticking clock. Last week, and for many weeks before that, the clock was the dictator of my days, marking not just waking, sleeping and departure times, but also holding tyrannical court over teaching, planning and lunch hours alike. Perhaps teaching, more than many other occupations, depends heavily on a schedule.
But we have no schedule now, except for maybe the aforementioned one– the one that keeps a wary eye only on the height of the sun. That limitless blue outside the window serves as a metaphor for my new reality: weeks and weeks at home or away with my family, and no real claim on my time. The thesis is written, the Masters claimed, the curriculum in place. I feel my mind beginning to expand; its tightly wrapped corners are unsealing themselves. I am reading again and now, writing.
Who knows (who knows?) what will come of it?
