ABOUT LEAVING

ABOUT LEAVING

One of the most bewildering days in my life was the day my husband left. We had been married for twelve years. He wasn’t going far, just about a quarter mile hike down the little dirt lane that wrapped around the Vermont lake. As a matter of fact, I would see the light glowing from his living room window. In the winter time, our 9 year old son could cross the frozen ice on his skates, leaving my arms and racing into his father’s waiting embrace.

I didn’t want to be anywhere near home on that hot summer day...my birthday. With little money, a precious week carved out of my job at the Alzheimer facility, my son and I had just enough poker coins between us to feed the gas tank and make it down to Topsail Island. My sister and her family had invited us to share their large beach house for a few days, promising food and sanctuary. My child and I made a game out of eating biscuits, sans chicken, that we could buy by the dozen at little restaurants along the way...getting more buttery and flakier the further south we traveled.

I had a huge shopping bag of Agatha Christie mysteries. My sister set me out on the beach, where I read one after another after another.

It was the birth of the sea turtles and a nine year old’s love that woke me up again to life. “Please, Mom, please. Just get up and run with me down the beach a bit. The turtles are hatching and they need us to form a safety line.” His excitement was tinged with worry for this mother who hadn’t moved in days, whose smile was pained.

The sight of hundreds of tiny turtles, leaving the nest and heading for the ocean water, strangers holding hands and breath and not daring to move a step – that was the Miracle, the marvel to awaken all life and to keep it marching forward.