In This Next Evolution
Half-decade birthday reflections
Dear Reader,
“Would you two like our chairs? My ninety-four-year-old mother decided not to join us after all so we won’t be needing them”, she said. An invitation to trade our second row sand loungers for an unobstructed ocean view. Given that our access to these exclusive seats was already an unexpected birthday favor from a lifeguard friend, we were plenty happy where we were. But thank you. Both of us wearing sunglasses, it was difficult to read whether she was approaching or simply walking by, but I’d noticed her and smiled. She was near seventy, I’d guessed — old enough to have a parent in their nineties. Skin bronzed — a sun worshipper — with bluntly cropped chestnut hair, she was clean faced except for rouged lips. Everything about her was effortlessly elegant. A simple white linen button-down over a navy blue two piece kind of classic. Her coordinating striped canvas sun hat tied under her chin and round glasses made her someone more likely be found at the French seaside than on our Pacific island. Without hesitation, now donned in a snorkel mask, she gallops toward the break. Barely visible over the sand berm, I can see her chestnut hair, now wet and thinner than it’d appeared before, and she’s jumping like a child over incoming waves. Bright. Assured.
On Tuesday I turned thirty-five. The number feels weighty, easy to remember. The digits in between decades and half-decades are easily lost. Am I thirty-two or thirty-three this year? But thirty-five feels like a land marker, a check-point along the great journey. It’s not so much a reckoning with my own mortality or a fear of aging, but rather the recognition of a chapter closed and one beginning. A time to decide how to fully embody the person who will make my dreams come true.
These days, I am extracting the highest yield of joy and contentment from simple, present moments and gestures. Let’s forgo the pricey dinner. Go somewhere beautiful and enjoy the sweetness of doing nothing. Pack a picnic wrapped in waxed paper and twine. Don’t forget the tiny tongs for the tiny pickles. The black truffle chips as birthday cake (I swear I was a truffle pig in a past life). Grab a hot cup of something on the way.
I celebrated my arrival at this half-decade check-point in the sand and sun. The universe’s gift: an unusually unpopulated beach reminiscent of the pandemic era, and wind, wind, wind to carry away all that I am ready to shed and release before turning the fresh page. Wash it away in salty waters. Unexpected gestures of generosity from unexpected places put the cherry on top. Coffees on the house. A complimentary invitation to sit and take some towels. While away, a sweet and sneaky friend comes through to bring our casetta to a further stage of completion — we have cabinet doors now, people! And spooked cats from the invasion of a “stranger”. I finished a book from my beach chair and finished the day honoring my inner child with a sundae. Organic hot fudge. No cherry on top.
And the most memorable, unexpected gift — this delightful woman in the waves. An embodiment of whom I wish to be in this evolution of womanhood. Forever the artist. Self confident. Generous. Graceful. Unabashedly free.
I’ll go bodysurfing with you any day!
Yippee! What a great birthday wish.