Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

Impressions in wet sand. Sneekers and boots, sandles and a few bare and naked feet. Just a few bare feet, it is october afterall.  Round impressions from walking sticks and baby feet every so often. But regularly, those baby feet. And I wonder why. I imagine a parent, scooping up a toddler into a piggy back ride and then letting the wiggling wee one down after a short riding respite. Dog prints in wild archs going in and out of the ends of waves, the line where the tide erases everything. 

And I imagine how sooner or later, tonight and tomorrow early morning, a tide will come in and take away all traces of our shod and unshod animal prints. Flood the prints with the waves coming ashore, leaving the sand smooth and pristine again. 

What if the bits of sadnesses, stresses, worries and longings of our lived days were left in the prints we leave during our walkings. Left to be swollowed up by the lapping water. As if by intention, as if what we could not carry any longer could be returned to some universe. As if by returning to the sea what we could not bear, we might be comforted and even healed by the rhythmn of the to and fro, in and out, of the salty waves. 

Big shells decorate the beach, small ones as well.  But the big ones are scattered widely, seemingly intentionally, to be notice, possibly picked up and taken home as sourvniers. I think of the parents of an old friend whose religious sect believed that their god scattered dinosaur bones deep in the gound for the purpose of deceiving the godless into beleiving that the earth was older than six thousand years. I would prefer a micro-managing deity scattering shells across a narrow beach expecting children to collect bucket fulls and beg their parents to bring home those wonders of creation.

For as long as I have had daughters, there have been glass bowls and vases of collected shells decorating telephone nooks and mantles. Souveniers of beach days. Brought home by the bucketfuls from beaches in driving distance or one by one when the transporation was via air. Souveniers from a lifetime of beach visits.  Many, many shells and one coconut.

It was the first time that Julia saw the ocean, during what was our yearly Florida visit to Grandpa and Grandma Claire.  Julia was six, home from China for five months.  Her English sparce. We had reason, and I don’t remember why, to explain to her what a souvenier was. We told her that she could bring home a souvenier, something to remember this first adventure and visit by and we offered to buy and take home anything she wanted.  We thought she might gather some shells, or pick out some tacky objet d’arte from one of the ubiquitous souvenir stores that grandma ushered her into.  She would have none of the hats or shirts or whirly pinwheels or sunglasses or dolls or snow globes. She didn’t appear to want anything.

Then, on our last beach days, Julia ran down to where the waves touched the shore, retrieved something and ran back to us.  “Souvenier” she proudly said, holding out a brown, hairy coconut that washed up in the waves. And that was what she wanted to bring home.  

It fit into Daddy’s carry on bag. Security at the airport gave us a look but did not ask. And the brown and hairy coconut moved from the beach in Florida to our big house in Indianapolis to the puppy house in Madison to the blue victorian house in Newton and onto the green house we live in now.

We arrived at Ferry Beach on Friday evening and it is Sunday now.  We have one more night and will be home tomorrow probably after a grocery stop along the way. I’ve had three walks on the beach, a writing workshop, some singing, many conversations, a game of Telestrations and another of Uno, two camp fires, two roasted marshmallows. I taken two naps and alone time in our room. Julia wanted a lot of time without me, most of it spent on her phone but some observing of what was going on, some puzzle putting together, sitting in front of the fire and a few short conversations. We came here for the first time during the fall of 2021. It was a small group that year and we observed all sorts of Covid protocalls. I wanted to be part of this community and felt somewhat separate from most of it during that weekend.  Mostly due to myself. This time it is easier. This time we are part of the community. This time I can say, I’ve found my people.