Picnic on the beach.........

An easy 25 feet separates 3 familiar silhouettes from my ever watchful eyes. I sit in the company of at least 20 well fed seagulls, all of which have much more of an interest in what I hold in my hands, than what is actually going through my head.

Normally, it would be my dogs staring intensely at me around the kitchen table. But today, I woke up yearning for a picnic, needing a beach, and aching for time to stand still long enough to breathe in each one of my baby boys....I inhale........pack 4 lunches, throw in some munchies. Granted, it is not your Ina Garten Barefoot Contessa spread, but then to my defense, Ina doesn't have to deal with food allergies, arguments over who called shotgun first, what type of music to play, who farted, the punch buggy game, and then the punch buggy game gone seriously wrong...(Gabe always ends up thinking every car is fair game and wails on Will)...So in my world, walking outside to get some herbs from my garden is more like staking out the joint for a mental escape. I picture myself scaling fences, then remembering in my youth, how when I was far thinner and more limber, it took 3 Greeks to hoist me back onto a boat, scaling a fence with what most certainly would inspire Sir Mix a Lot to rewrite a classic, would be, pardon the pun, assinine. Fat asses should not happen to good people. But I digress, and I exhale......................................

Nothing beats the beach after the crowds have left. On a windy day like today, where the damp salted chill competes with the warming pockets of sun that slips through the clouds, you can find a few scattered people laying about like seals just taking in the moment.......My boys explore the shorelines. Will and Carlos walk ahead. Gabe sits, legs crossed, his back to me, looking at the ocean. His dark outline made more pronounced by the glittering light that appears to dance around him, is pure perfection. From this distance, I can only hear the gush of uninterrupted wind, the crashing of the waves and the slight frothing of the foam left behind... thier conversations are left inaudible, replaced by the gulls that grow impatient with me. My heart clenched, reflextively I inhale. The summer I was pregnant with Gabe, JFK Jr's plane went down. I was attending NYU when he was at the Law school, so he was very real to me. Called me Presley because of the tribute to Elvis I had painted on the back of my denim jacket. We graduated the same year. I first paid attention to the phrase search and recovery when that plane went down. In my mind, search meant hope, recovery meant a healing, a saving....they meant a retrieval of the bodies, I was hoping for a revival, a resurrection of sorts. You hear "recovery" used for our ASD kids, every parents hope, every search, every research, would end in recovery...My mom spent the summer recovering from colon cancer surgery at my home this summer. A search for a reason for her overwhelming exhaustion lead to recovery from a cancer that grew within. For the innate procrastinator, summers long leisurely days were seemed to have been designed with us in mind. Yet, this year more than any, it has betrayed me. I have not been able to catch up to the demands of dealing with so many unique needs in so many different
bodies. The wave swells high, curves inward with a rush, racing onto the shore, boyhood returned to the sea, adolescence awkwardly taking it's place. I search for ways to slow life down a bit, keep my boys where they are at until I am ready to let them go, knowing full well I might never be ready. Recovery? Rehab? A surprise picnic on the beach. A chance to spend time with my favorite kids, at my favorite place, in the dwindling days of my most favorite season.. Perfect way to spend a day off of school. My heart replete, surrendering, I exhale.......

An easy 3 inches in height seperates Will's shoulders from mine. I look up to him now. We fold the blanket, pick up what was left by the seagulls, collect the seashells and rocks, and begin our walk to the car. Though we are no where near through with the work expected from the day, the break was embraced. The beach, literally, figuratively, has always been where I go to restore. It's a moment of peace.

Shotgun called...arms punched.....radio station negociated.....ramdon conversations collide....several warnings issued.....sea air drifts in.....the first strands of Stones Beast of Burden starts, the volume gets turned up.....and the car saunters home..................

Definitely not ready for summer to end...........
Definitely not ready for my kids to grow up...............
Definitely just not ready.................
still searching....................
perhaps rescue...........
and then recovery...............