From Somewhere So Far Away

Brent and I are on the Pacific Coast for a few days with two of his sons, their wives, and their five children. The beach was calling me this morning, so I opted out of the group breakfast at a local diner. I always feel a little guilty when I go off by myself and family’s around, but while I was on the beach, I reminded myself that pretty much everyone needs time alone when family’s around, you just have to learn how to take it. For me, that’s taken over sixty years.

Winds are gusting to 27 miles per hour today. I love windy days like this, especially on the beach. When I’d crossed the dunes and finally gotten to where the sand is easier to walk on, I started to cry one of those quick, deep cries that creep up on you out of nowhere. It only lasted a minute or so. But while it was happening, I heard myself say, ah, Momma, and realized I was missing her in a way I hadn’t felt before, as if her absence was a piece of the whole human experience: come and gone. Everyone. All of us, all of her, and none of her. The ocean beside me – half a planet’s worth – churning and churning endlessly. Me knowing that her life had meaning and that mine does too.

A moment later, the wind kicked up like a gift, the kind of wind that will hold you up if you let it. And where there’s wind, there’s also Forrest. As a toddler he came alive when a big wind came up. I remember my arms around his waist, his tiny feet on the railing of our deck, while Hurricane Floyd began to gather in the sky in 1999. His eyes half-closed as if in prayer, absorbing it all, his chest leaning forward, trusting me to hold him steady while his arms caught the wind. A few hours later, he slept through the night for the first time, even when nine White Pines slammed to the ground around our house.

Like me, Forrest loved the wind, the way it challenges you, comes at you, carries you, turns you this way and that. The way it wakes you up.

As I’m writing, I hear one of Brent’s granddaughters. She’s laughing in the room next door. They’re home. Time for me to re-join the group. Before I go, a few photographs, and a song I wrote for Forrest about the wind. About him. It’s one of my favorites.

Last night’s sunset.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse, Newport, Oregon

…the wind that came up…

Set the World on Fire

From somewhere so far away the wind blew and found its way to me
and then it found you
It circled and spun you ‘round 
it lifted you off the ground 
I knew that you could feel the wind
pull you higher over mountains to the clouds and through the valley
Your eyes lit up the sky
Set the world on fire

One by one and two by two we loved you and danced with you
in love with you
You held on you took my hand you turned me and spun me ‘round
‘til I was sure to feel the wind
feel the wind
pull me higher over mountains to the clouds and through the valley
Your eyes lit up the sky 
Set the world on fire

Pull me higher over mountains to the clouds and through the valley
Your eyes lit up the sky 
Set the world on fire

Two little eyes light up the sky 
Set the world on fire

Lie down and be with me forever I’ll be with you and feel the wind