Older man and the sea . . .

Saturday morning. Coffee. Not on my sofa.

I just came in from a sit/walk on the beach. I would have posted directly from the surf side, but I don't need any more foreign matter clogging my keyboard or clinging to my screen. I won't go into detail, but having an allergy plays havoc with computer hygiene.

Living in North Alabama, I suffer from a landlocked neurosis. There is something deep inside me that draws me to the sea like those creatures on Discovery Channel or National Geographic or Animal Planet that defy physical common sense to make the pilgrimage to the briny deep. Most of the time there is some mating ritual involved. In their journey, not mine. Shells are the only thing I pick up.

It has been too long since I have been here. So I was up early, as the eastern sky began to lighten. I hurried through the hotel lobby, where I filled my coffee tankard, and headed out the back door to the beach.

At the edge of the water I stood still, not knowing what to do next, like a date with an old friend who years ago had known everything about me and me them, but so much time has passed.

Turning my eyes from the gulf, I began to walk along the beach, looking only at the sand in front of me where my next step would land. But the waves kept breaking a few feet away, unrolling like a carpet of foamy, bubbly ripples to soften the path.

Like a good friend the sea let me walk on in silence for awhile, walking as if I had somewhere I had to be, some distant goal to achieve. Actually I had already set my sights on the long pier that jutted into the gulf about a mile away. My pace quickened.

But something in front of me caught the morning light and threw it back at me. For about thirty feet there were piles of sea shells. White and red, bluish grey, sandy brown. Perfect and flawed. Whole and broken.

I stopped.

My first thought was to find the best ones and take them. Suddenly I felt tired. I walked a few more feet, beyond the shell deposit, and sat down.

For about an hour I sat down, sipping coffee, staring into the face of my old friend. Occasionally something inside of me would say "you need to get up and walk, or go back to the room . . .you need to do something."

But that voice, the voice of my everyday, was quickly lost in the endless sound of the waves, as if my friend were saying, "don't go yet, it's been so long. there is still so much to talk about, or not to talk about. Just sit still with me a while longer."

And so I did. Thinking of nothing and everything.

As the sun grew higher, others came and walked along the beach. All of them offered a "good morning."

And they were right.

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