I’m back home from the beach. I wish I could write that sentence differently: “I’m back home at the beach.” Maybe one day we’ll migrate seaward from the mountains. For now I’ll just remember how pretty it is to watch the day end when water, sand, and clouds interact with the changing slant of sunlight.
When I was pregnant, I saw pregnant women everywhere. The world seemed full to bursting with round bellies. In my post-pregnancy life, I seldom see pregnant women anywhere. Likewise, when my husband and I talked recently about how we like a certain kind of car, suddenly I started seeing those cars all around me. There’re everywhere! I hadn’t noticed them before!
At the end of 2020, I encountered a word I’m pretty sure I’d never seen in more than four decades of reading. It was in A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I’m almost certain I’d never been confronted with this word because I had to look it up: palimpsest. It is a manuscript that’s been written on more than once, and where the earlier writing hasn’t been completely erased; the previous writing is still visible and legible under the more recent text, but not without some effort.
After coming across this unusual word at the end of 2020, I’ve read it in at least three other books in 2021. Each time I come across it, I am surprised to see it. I hadn’t run into this word in 40 years, and now I’ve seen it four times in less than one.
Today in the car, I listened to a podcast episode where a paleontologist talked about how the history of the earth can be read in the layers of its crust. I thought of a palimpsest, now that I know the word. Then the paleontologist said, “Some pages are overwritten, creating difficult-to-decipher palimpsests of long-gone landscapes.”
As with every time after the first, I was excited and surprised — there it is again!
Could it be that I have actually encountered this word in the years leading up to 2020 and just didn’t bother to look it up? That seems the most likely explanation, that I just didn’t notice it before. I have a hard time accepting that possibility; surely I’d remember and notice that word. Whatever the case, I certainly notice it now.
For those of you following, as soon as I published yesterday’s post about my inability to figure out the coffee pot, I entered our rented beach house to the spurt and gurgle of morning brewing. As they poured me a cup, my girlfriends got a good laugh about me solving the coffee pot problem by going outside to write about it instead of waking someone up to help me.
Now, I’m sitting on a jetty with my friends. It is low tide, and our legs swing over the edge of the concrete finger. We watch seagulls drift in the evening sea breeze, kids splash in tide pools, and surfers bob up and down over smooth swells. One friend pulled out her phone, queued up music, and said she had a surprise for me. The next song that played was Bonnie Raitt singing John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery.” With John Prine.
As we walked here, a man pedaled by with his little dog in his bicycle basket. The dog’s ears flapped in the wind. Life is full of delight.
I woke this morning to the sound of surf. It was 7:37, and diffused light from an overcast sky seeped around the edges of the blinds. My body wanted to go back to sleep, but I wanted to see the beach. My girlfriends and I arrived at Folly Beach, South Carolina, yesterday evening around 6 o’clock, it was drizzling, and we needed to set up the bar and put groceries away for our annual girls’ weekend. Then it was dark, and we were too busy hanging out, drinking, and ordering fish tacos to do anything like walk the one block to the beach.
We stayed up late, of course. So despite probably needing a lot more rest, I was happy I at least slept this morning beyond my normal 5 am wakeup. Nobody else in the house was awake, and I couldn’t lie there in bed listening to the ocean and not go see it. I brushed my teeth, gulped down some water, pulled on a pair of jeans, and walked barefoot across the street to the beach. No coffee yet, I wanted to get out there immediately.
Now I’m back, sitting on the porch, and everyone else still sleeps. I’m listening to surf pound, processing my photos, and desperately hoping someone else will wake up soon. The coffee maker is this tremendous combination 12-cup pot / single-cup Keurig type deal, where it tries to do everything, and as a result can’t do anything. After 15 minutes of filling the water thing, pressing all the buttons, taking stuff out, putting stuff in, holding buttons down some more, and doing all of those steps multiple times, I can’t figure out how to make a simple cup of coffee.
I really really want a cup of coffee.
I want a cup of coffee and a piece of the key lime pound cake one of my girlfriends brought. I’m trying to buy time, but I don’t think I can last much longer. If nobody is up by the time I post this, I might need to get in the car and go find a cafe.
Yesterday afternoon, I closed my laptop on work, went out to the garden to snip rosemary and thyme, and came back in to pull out two saucepans and the sugar. I made a batch of rosemary simple syrup and a batch of thyme simple syrup for two cocktails I want to try with my girlfriends this weekend: an Apple Cider Whiskey Rose(mary) cocktail and a Lemon and Thyme Whiskey Sour.*
I felt freed the other day when I wrote about cramming for the week. I didn’t realize how much I was holding inside until it was out. Laying out my stress, and acknowledging that I need to exercise and journal to help keep me balanced, changed the way I approached the rest of the week. I checked the driving distance to my Girls’ Weekend destination (6-7 hrs), our check-in time (4pm), what time the liquor store opens (10am), and when the pool had open lanes to reserve (9am).
The times work out perfectly. So now, this morning, on the first day of my five day weekend, I’ll throw all my stuff for my trip in the car, swim, shower at the pool, arrive at the liquor store at opening time, and then hit the road with a phone full of podcasts and music to listen to. I’ll arrive shortly after check-in along with one of the other early arrivers, and the weekend will begin!
*Thank you for y’all’s suggestions when I requested autumn cocktail ideas! If we can find everything for it, we’re going to try this Autumn Leaves cocktail. Another friend requested tequila on the liquor run I’ll make this morning. I’m scared about that.
At 5:40 this morning, in the dark and drizzle, we pulled away from the curb with my 15 year old daughter at the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat and watched the wet road, saw coppery leaves in a pretty drift under the tree they’d fallen from, undisturbed yet by cars driving over them.
Our daughter has 6am drylands practice for swimming on Mondays and Wednesdays. She’s gradually been adding more challenging drives to her practice: first around the neighborhood, then around other neighborhoods, then to the next town over by small roads, then on the highway. A few weeks ago, she graduated to driving to and from swim practice, during the daylight hours, on the highway. Then rush during rush hour. Then after sunset.
This morning, we went in the blackness long before sunrise. It had rained in the night, and was drizzling when we left the house. The brakes squeaked in the wetness — it’s been a long time since it’s rained here — and the drizzle was in that awkward phase where it is constant enough that you have to regularly use the wipers, but the lowest speed on the windshield wipers is too fast.
About halfway to the gym, we were swallowed by a fog bank. On the wet, hilly highway, in the dark, in the rain. She did great, but I, of course, worried. One day, she’ll be doing this without me in the passenger seat. Winter will come, and there will be snow and ice. When the kids were little, I worried about injuries. As they grow up and prepare to move out, I worry about their lives.
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