the beach | reverse threading

i have a seagull collection. much like my horse collection, my seagull collection is much bigger in my memory than in the actual bin-in-the-basement. when i opened what i thought was a big stable of horse figurines, i was shocked to find that my i-packed-it-in-1972-according-to-the-newspapers-in-the-box brain had overestimated the numbers…by a lot. my seagull collection, on the other hand, was packed a bit later – more like 1980 – and i had a (little bit) better memory about how many jonathan livingston seagulls i had collected through the years.

growing up on long island i loved seagulls. never too far from the beach, they were everywhere, but i spent great periods of time beach-sitting winter/spring/summer/fall watching them swoop and holler, screeching at their scavenged finds. richard bach created a whole seagull community metaphor and i fell right in.

i can still smell the wet sand, see the seaweed washed ashore on pebbles i collected even back then, feel the sun, even the winter sun, on my face. it all made me breathe differently. it all made me think and grow and dream.

john denver’s song the eagle and the hawk spoke to me back then. his simple lyrics prompted me to let those dreams TAKE FLIGHT.

“And all of those who see me, and all who believe in me
Share in the freedom I feel when I fly.
Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountain tops,
Sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars.
And reach for the heavens and hope for the future,
And all that we can be and not what we are”

purchase THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY CD or download on iTUNES or CDBaby

read DAVID’S thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY

TAKE FLIGHT from THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY ©️ 1997 & 2000 kerri sherwood

one summer, (almost) every single day, i took The Girl and The Boy to the beach. not the beaches on lake michigan, for the water there is way too cold, but a beach that is inland in our town and is man-made. that was the summer-of-the-best-tan and the summer i loved packing and re-packing our beach bag, a small cooler with drinks and snacks and buckets and plasticware and shovels for building castles in the sand.

they were littler then and it was easy to keep them happy on the beach. when The Boy was reeeally little, he, like his dad, did not the feeling of sand in his toes. he preferred to stay on the blanket or the beach towel. but at this time in his life – the-summer-of-the-beach – he loved it. he played in the sand and the water as much as every child there, including his big sister and me.

looking at this morsel SANDCASTLE WITH ME from the painting SPOONS AND SANDCASTLES makes me want to go back. go back and do it again. repeat that summer. play in the water more. have more icepops from the refreshment stand. stay late until the sun was almost directly on the horizon. and make more sandcastles.

click here (or on the image above) for SANDCASTLE WITH ME products

click here or on image below to see the original painting SPOONS AND SANDCASTLES on david’s gallery site