What's Left on the Shore
I am sitting alone on the shore as the sun sets and the tide recedes. The water’s persistent rhythm of back and forth pulls it unwaveringly further from the shore with each wave. The change in each incursion on the sand is imperceptible but its cumulative effect is not. Each beat in the unremitting cadence pulls the water further out to sea. In the tide’s wake the ocean leaves behind bare sand and scattered shells; detritus it no longer has use for.
Maybe the metaphor is a bit heavy handed but this is what this year feels like. The slow pulling back interspersed with repeated surging toward me, only to turn and retreat again. This is not a moody ebb and flow. It is the normal course of things. This is E beginning to take tentative steps out into the world and coming back home to recoup her sense of safety. She is discarding that which is no longer needed and moving toward something. She is slipping away. As she should be. This is how it works; how it is meant to work.
That it is only the natural course of things does little to blunt the impact. The moon is pulling her to different shores and I am both helpless to stop it and have no desire to try.
Though it feels like a multitude of lifetimes ago, I do remember that pull. I know what it feels like to have the gut deep knowledge that it’s time to go, mingled with the uncertainty of stepping into the world on my own. And, since E is the sixth, I also know well this moment of preparing to send one of my own out into the world. The difference is that this time I don’t have any other children at home to distract me from the magnitude of this moment. I am utterly attuned to the relentless withdrawing and leaving bare.
Yesterday at this time E suggested we climb to the top of a hill to watch the sunset. On the way, she scampered out into the ocean and pulled out a seaweed covered rock. Nestled among the green was the smallest starfish I’ve ever seen. It was barely larger than a fingertip. I didn’t know such a thing existed in the world. It was a marvel. Flushed with the excitement of discovery, E examined it in the golden light of sunset.
In these moments when I feel the tide receding, I need to remember this, too: that being laid bare does not mean being left vacant. It is a moment of exposing. That feels vulnerable and threatening but I don’t have to give in to that fear. I can choose instead to see this as an opportunity for exploration and awe. If the waters are ebbing, there are fewer layers to obscure the wonders that are concealed within my soul.
