RE-COLLECTION (TO GATHER ONCE MORE) FROM CHILDHOOD

The first night of a new move, from city to Island, I wake to talking, my parents settling into this new place, a beach cabin squatting in the sand.  Eight years old, I leave my bed, alive with excitement, and pad down the hall.  I ask to walk on the beach and my parents are agreeable.

2:00 AM finds me alone on the beach, my small frame courting a white cotton nightgown and bare feet.  I can feel the giddy anticipation of this August pre-dawn hour – it is the late 1950’s.  Voluptuous salt scents ride the breeze, pressing complex sea life into my senses.  Lunar light vibrates, millions of bouncing brilliant white fragments cast among currents like glimmering churlish fish breaking the surface.  My nightgown, illuminated, is now an aural glow flanking my body, buoyed by the wind.  Shallow tide pools capture the direction of damp night air; thin, narrow wavelets skittering to the edges of their reach.

I hear the slap of wet sand cool under my small feet as they dance to the shining undulations of the tide retreating and advancing on the shore, tugged by the moon and the sun.  Looking East toward the Cascade Mountains, low-slung lights of the Seattle skyline, flat against the shore, stretch into a single diamond strand, interrupted only by the solitary pendent of the Smith Tower, a lone skyscraper keeping watch.  I imagine myself a woman bold enough to wear such finery.  In that dream moment I know it is possible.

Standing at the furthest reach of the sand spits curve, where our beach cabin is barely visible, the unknown darkness reaches around the corner.  In my moment on that curve where the shore bends, I know that my world is this wild free place – the place of a dream come true.