We have gone to Mexico almost every year since I was 14. My parents purchased a timeshare in Cancun, and then later in Playa Del Carmen, which has allowed us to return every year to a familiar view, a familiar bed, a familiar cerulean ocean. It has been an incredible gift. This fixed vantage point has offered interesting perspective as well, watching how a landscape, a town, a way of life can change year over year, decade over decade. What seemed unchanging however was the sugar-white sand and the rhythmic, ageless beating of wave on shore. As it ever was. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. But then one year a hurricane came and scooped away mountains of sand, pulling it out into the depths, somewhere. The shore, once soft and shifting, became a treacherous, rocky terrain of foot slicing, toe stubbing rubble and broken coral. It took years for the sand to return. At first a thin layer coated the craggy, broken shore. Then the sand gradually filled in some of ...
I don’t know why, but I have always felt calm in a crisis. When I was 16, I was in a terrible car accident. I was stopped at the bottom of a hill, waiting to make a left turn, when I happened to look in the rearview mirror and saw a car barreling toward me. I knew it was going to hit me. At that moment, everything slowed down. I noted the driver, turning and talking to the person beside her, oblivious. I thought through my options. Turn left? No, oncoming traffic. Move right to get out of the way? No, cars coming there, too. Speed up? No. I wouldn’t be able to accelerate fast enough, and then she would hit me and propel me even farther forward. My only option was to take the hit. I somehow had the presence of mind to take a deep breath and relax. I knew that the more tense and tight I was, the more injury I would sustain. So, I just relaxed my body, took a deep breath, pushed my foot down harder on the brake, made sure my steering wheel was straight, closed my eyes and waited. Bre...
I didn’t really have words for a while. April 4th was coming. I could feel all my subtle, exploring attunements drawing back their fragile tendrils, closer to the body, seeking shelter, sensing a threat approaching. I was alert, but almost in a state of fight or flight, where crafting explanations or even processing what I was experiencing in the moment took too much from me and I knew I had to conserve my energy. In a way it was like being sucked through a straw. Pressure mounting. Everything narrowing. There would be no escaping it. The day was inextricably, inexorably coming. We knew we didn’t want to be home for it, so we went to the ocean. Someplace bigger than we were, someplace elemental. The air is different at the beach and when you breathe it in, you can almost feel the living medicine fill your lungs. It is soft on your skin. It makes you walk slower, breathe deeper, move through space differently. And Jonah was with us, just not all the heaviness we carry back ho...
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