Serenity at the Shore

It's Saturday, and it's really warm out. The sun is shining. Soul Mate and I wander along the beach. He's like a little kid at the side of the sea. 

He meanders along, poking at the sand with a stick, picking up rocks and gnarled lengths of driftwood. He climbs high upon the storm strewn logs and smiles. Yes, I think. You can be the "king of the castle" for today. Eventually, he joins me in my ongoing life quest to find the perfect piece of sea glass. I find one or two gems, but none as magnificent as "Hearty," the one I found last month when I combed the beach with Yoga Kid.

Gratitude washes over me as I sit and ponder the beauty of our shore, our island. I say a prayer for the people suffering so deeply on the other side of this ocean, the ocean that I love so much. God bless them all.

Yoga Kid, Hearty and Me

My blog ponderings last night were related to "beach" novels and "meditation." Ironic perhaps, that today turned out to be the most beautiful day yet of 2011 so Yoga Kid and I headed for the beach, where we actually meditated, twice. I'm kind of thinking that meditating is something that I should stop reading about, and start doing.

Snippets from our beautiful afternoon:

Me: 
I'm trying to write lighter, happier posts on my blog these days.

Yoga Kid:
It's not working, you better try harder.

Me:
Sometimes I'm funny.

Yoga Kid:
Mostly not.

Me:
Damn.

We walk and talk for about thirty  minutes, then sit down on the rocks by water's edge, where I suggest that we look for heart-shaped rocks and sea glass. 

Me:
Maybe I'll write a book called Heart Shaped Rocks and Sea Glass and it will be about a crazy woman on stress leave who, in her obsessive search for heart shaped rocks and sea glass, finds her self.

Yoga Kid:
Probably not.

Nonetheless, we find ourselves some lovely specimens, including a very small heart shaped rock.

After a spell, we are completely overjoyed when Yoga Kid comes upon a heart shaped green piece of sea glass.

Yoga Kid:
A green heart! Green is the colour of the heart chakra! (Yoga Kid's yoga business is called Anahata Moon Yoga - Anahata is the sanskrit name for heart chakra).

Me:
You should take a really artsy picture.

Yoga Kid:
Let's balance Hearty (the green heart shaped piece of sea glass needed a name, so we gave it one) on a flat rock on a bigger rock right here and I'll snap the picture when the tide washes up towards them.

Half an hour, several wet running shoes later, and a couple of near losses of Hearty out to sea, and Yoga Kid finally captures it.

And from this beautiful afternoon, and this one photo, I realize what mindfulness is truly all about.

Me:
Thanks, Yoga Kid.