Pier Pilings

The beach has been such a wonderful haven for us this year as we have occasionally needed to escape the confines of the RV to find beauty and breathing room, and never more so than these last few weeks of social isolation. I have always loved the ocean--really, any form of water, even when it's falling out of the sky--and it has always helped me keep my sanity and perspective. Well, as much as that's possible.

This last week, we've been parking ourselves down along the shoreline where an old pier juts out. I used to take the kids to this pier before the hurricane. It was about half a mile from our neighborhood beach, so we'd walk along the shore and then out along its creaking beams until the kids could sit at the end with their legs hanging free over the water while I tried not to have a heart attack that one of them was going to fall off or be eaten by a shark that decided to unexpectedly lunge out of the water. Sometimes while we were there (in between the heart palpitations and panic), I would read out loud to them from whatever book we were enjoying at the time, mostly Prince Caspian and The Just So Stories, if I'm remembering right.

Now, there is no way to walk out on the pier as all the boards were torn loose and flung to kingdom come in a Cat 5 storm. But the bones of the structure still stand and have turned a beautiful sea green that I'm noticing for the first time, now that I'm not so busy walking on it (and trying to keep the kids from falling off of it). The pilings weathered the storm, and it softened and strengthened and stained them a deep and vibrant hue. And they are beautiful, if I can slow down long enough to look at them, and the truth of what they show me is beautiful.

We go to the sea because it is bigger than us. It reminds us that we are small and insignificant and a good storm sweeping down off its surface can do away with us in a moment. And we go to the sea because it is beautiful, and we need the beauty to give us hope and perspective and joy when the struggle threatens to hold us below the surface until we drown. And we go to the sea for air, for deep breaths that fill our lungs and rush out of them full of the tang of salt and water and life.

But now I also ask myself, are my pilings sunk deep into what is solid so that, no matter the storms that come, I can be softened and strengthened and stained with vivid shades of light and water? I want my foundation to be sturdy enough that I'm not blown off by the slightest breeze or even by a category five hurricane, by a cough and a cold or by a global pandemic, by a change in my schedule or a cross country move. And only then do I have the opportunity to be changed for the better by the wind and the waves that wash over me.