Gift from the Lake

And suddenly, she felt old, aged like the day as it burns through the sky toward nightfall. Gone were the vibrant, showy hues of intense red and molten orange one feels as the sun reaches for the horizon; here, instead, were the soft pinks, a wash of watery violet, a hint of solid cerulean where the sky becomes earth.
It wasn’t this gradual though, this feeling of… finality. It wasn’t as if she had seen it coming out her window, as she had seen the sun dip down below the concrete skyline and color the night. No, this feeling was sudden, and once upon her, complete. There was no time to panic and rush about, ripping off the drapes to catch the last hint of golden color glinting off distant glass. Once the consciousness of this was upon her, it was complete, a blanket of acceptance as deep and calm as the night’s approach.
She paused, feeling the sand around her and the boom of jets above, and settled into the feeling. It was neither surprising nor disappointing, as she had imagined it might be. The acceptance of this place in her life, was just that, acceptance. Like acceptance of the sunset, and sunrise, and the promise of a new day, she had, after all, that known all along it would happen eventually. That it would feel like this.
Perhaps that’s why she had put off the actions and relationships that had brought it on all these years. Some part of her psyche, the part that in youth, lies dormant and still, that part had always known this day was coming, had remained silent, allowing her to spend sunrise after sunrise in the company of others, or herself, so that she could better understand the certainty of it when it came.
There is no way to prevent the setting of the sun, nor the rising of it, though the foolish, or the daring—and it is possible to be both at the same time—m may try. It wasn’t that she learned this only for the first time in the twilight of her walk along the beach, just that she knew the time had come to remember it for herself.
And now, that that time had arrived, spread itself quietly and softly across the expanse of her being, this too, she settled into, waiting. She hadn’t changed, no more in that minute than any other before, and yet with the combination of all past minutes and moments, she had changed dramatically. She was a progression of life experiences; truths and mistakes and ideas comprised her being. This too, she recognized and accepted, with what she believed was the wisdom of someone who has lived enough life to reflect upon.
And more than anything, more than “age” or finality, it was wisdom that she felt, indescribably so.
Wisdom, because she felt that she had learned how to pair that daring with this new life, and she felt like she had been blessed with a summation of parts, her parts, and a unique understanding of their relation to the parts of others. Her sense of daring, that which she imagined would fade, or be taken entirely from her, with the choice now made, was replaced now by a sense of stepping into the unknown, in an entirely new and different way.
For her years of presence and solitude, she had received the ability to see herself for what she was, on her own, which held the excitement and chase of life she craved. In its place now, was a foreign and welcome change of pace, a new opportunity to trust the person she had become with an adventure not entirely her own.
And finally, when the sun set and she ended her day, quietly, alone, waiting, she accepted that this too, was what she wanted, all along. The solitude of self occasionally interrupted to make room for and a life with another equally composed and daring being.


I've been reading "Gift from the Sea," by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and I think it's easy to see here the influence her writing had on me as I wandered by Lake Michigan and then as I sat down to write. In her collection of essays and thoughts on what it is to be a "modern" woman, Lindbergh uses her experience as a woman, wife, mother and artist to craft a collection of well-written lines based on the gifts of time and clarity and sea life she received during her beach-front vacationing.
The writing spans 1955-75, and yet her book is as timeless as the beach itself, a well thought-out analysis of self and literary construction. I've always admired her stance, even if the idea of putting kids and a husband before myself has been pretty much non-existent in my life (It's uncanny how close this parallels the life of Charles Lindbergh, famed pilot and yes, husband to Anne Morrow).
But this evening, while easing my achy joints (go strep throat) into action, I was suddenly hit with the realization that I am going off to live with a man not as a room mate but as, well... a partner? This paradigm shift hasn't left me frazzled or anything, but I think it may be some combination of antibiotics and sleepiness that are numbing me to it.
And then again, with all seriousness, I know that not only do I want a sun to awake to new light each day, I'm ready for someone to be there with me as it happens.