Beach

I hope everyone gets the chance I had this week, to be invited by friends to the beach! Not only did a dear friend give me a ride all the way down there, but I stayed with friends at no cost to me, who provided a ride home. On reflecting about the week, I find myself wondering which thing was the most fun. To me it was spending time with old friends and getting to know them better, along with making some new ones. However, I must share a few highlights.

I try to never turn down an opportunity to sing if one just happens to jump out there. So singing karaoke at the Yacht Club was a fun surprise and listening to some wonderful voices of my friends and others while sitting near the water was fun. From what I was given to understand later, there happened to be some very interesting folks around. My friend’s dog can actually sing better than some of the crazy folks who began coming in and things got a little crazy right before we left.

A HUGE highlight was watching Vivi take to the ocean like a fish. It made me happy to let her go walking and swimming with the young girls in the group. You might think she was tired and slept all night long, but she and her friend dog, named Wilson, were up at 6 AM ready for the next fun thing.

Shopping is always on the list of things to do, especially when there is someone to read prices and explain the beauty of things I, and my blind friend Laverne, touched. I now have things for four Christmas stockings.

Oh yes, and then there were crab legs, eww! My friends were kind enough not to make fun of me for eating just one, and I know that makes me a little strange. Sorry. Not long ago a friend and I got caught in a hail storm. She is sixty-eight years old and that was the first time she had seen hail. So, now I must say, at my age, this is the first time I have ever experienced crab legs. Just as my friend marveled at the hailstorm, I am thankful to understand something new. Maybe I’ll even eat two next time.

Of course I insisted on there being rocking chairs and a porch before ever accepting the invitation. Laverne and I rocked the time away and caught up on more lost times through the years. She insisted on reading a devotion to me in Braille every morning and if I missed it, again at night. I especially love that part!

And the tandem bike? Just know that after I had surgery as a child my favorite mode of transportation was a bike. I rode a bike even after my children were born until one day I rode straight into a board sticking out the back of a parked truck. Ouch and beyond! It had been at least twenty years, probably even more since being on a bike; but going through the streets at a nice pace and feeling the wind like that just wet my appetite.

Why do I just ramble on and on when everyone has been to the beach many times? It is my goal to bring the worlds of the blind and sighted into one world, or at least one place of understanding in a better way, and to let everyone know we just all are people doing the things we love. I am truly blessed to have such good friends to write about, a family to do things with, as well and most of all, a God who understands best of all.

SEA FOAM

What can you get from the ocean?

The mud is grimy; the fish are slimy.

The ground you stand on washes away

And the sun burns your skin instead of the day.

The wind is a bat and the clouds are its ball;

The smell of the salt wets the seagull’s call.

What can you get from the ocean?

It’s voice is strong, yet soft as a spirit;

Trying to talk to the hearts that can hear it.

It rises and falls like the mood of a soul—

Waits for permission—its tides to roll.

It washes your feet—then off it goes;

Takes the sand from between your toes

Out to the breakers and lays it down

Giving the starfish another crown.

It makes a bed where the ships can sleep

And coughs up food from its cupboard deep.

It tumbles into restless hours

Showing off majestic powers.

As its white foam crests turn into blue

Humanity sees an angel’s view.

It still keeps its secrets while it tosses and roars.

And leaves a playground of joy on its shores.