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Last week brought a dose of the longed-for, best-of Pacific Northwest late spring weather. Warm with a gentle breeze. Blue skies with a whisk of tissue paper clouds, the ones that slink down at the end of the day and color the blaze of the sunset two-to-three shades darker.
May had just finished bringing her crayon crush dreams to fruition. Peonies, rhododendrons, lilies, strawberries, and the delicately painted helicopter wings of maples all fashioned the view in broad ranges of pinks, yellows, reds, creamsicles, various tones of lime, a cacophony of chartreuses and subtle waves of dusty blues. Hummingbirds dashed about on their well-oiled wings, and sometimes (astonishingly) stopped mid-air to assess their options. Bewick’s wrens, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Song sparrows and the dazzling Western Tanager were in full concert while the bees shamelessly, passionately made out with an array of euphorbia blossoms.
As I sat next to My Beloved on the front deck, listening and looking at all this splendor with a smile on my face, I said: “Maybe this is my Beaches.”
He didn’t know what I meant.
I might have guessed that he wouldn’t have seen the movie, being almost ten years younger than me, but I was willing to bet he knew the song, which I began to sing.
“Did you ever know that you’re my hero . . .”
He did not know it.
“Bette Midler? Barbara Hershey after Hannah and Her Sisters and with her overplump, injected lips?”
“It sounds familiar.” He was humoring me.
So I had to explain it.
“Here’s the situation: You know you’re going to die soon - maybe within weeks, but it’s not to the point where you can’t sit up and have a conversation. You’re just tired and no one expects you to really do anything anymore. Even if you wanted to do something, go somewhere, you wouldn’t have the energy for that. Your body would still be available to you, but only within a limited capacity. Your mind would be operational, but also: preparing.
“Mostly, you have to put up with people asking you ridiculous questions that are not helpful or interesting (which is kind of what has been going on your entire life anyway.) You spend the great majority of your days in the most comfortable chair you own, with a blanket over you, looking at … “
I paused. My Beloved looked at me with expectation, as if I were having one of those menopausal moments where a common word I use regularly escaped from my synapses that very second.
“No,” I continued “that’s the question. What are you looking at? Where do you want to be? Who do you want sitting next to you? All day. For weeks, or however long you have to live. Because wherever you are, whatever your view is, whoever is with you all day, just looking out at—whatever—with you—that is your Beaches.”
My Beloved nodded in a gesture of understanding.
I looked at the dog, fully white-muzzled now, dream-running towards the slow squirrels scampering in the wilds of his imagination.
“This is definitely Wellington’s Beaches,” I said.
“Well that’s not true because the dog is never going to die.”
Friends, that particular kind of denial (as adorable and full-hearted as it is) can be categorized as definitely not preparing.
But prepared or not, as the world rolls on toward the next equinox, which always feels like a second chance at a New Year reset to me, I want to remind myself to stop counting summers — all the ones past and all the ones to come that I look forward to and yet can’t count on because the number of future summers available to me is a secret number that cannot be revealed. Ever.
I want to remind myself to listen more, to people who want to express something I don’t know yet - about them, personally or about the way they experience their own time here, or about anything they have the honesty and energy to say out loud.
I want to remind myself not to wait for a dire diagnosis in order to give myself permission to spend an entire day in a comfortable chair looking at the breathtakingly generous earth, with someone I love right next to me.
Most of all, I want to wish everyone out there your own custom-created Beaches Day, anytime you feel like having one.
God knows we could all use a few.
Thank you for reading.
If you are inspired, leave a comment and let us know: What/Who/Where is your Beaches?
Even if you haven’t seen the movie.
{|AC
For those of you who missed the milky aquamarine-colored spider relaxing in the petal of the peony (as I did when I took the photo) here’s a close-up. Spider at twelve o’clock.1
The soundtrack for my Beaches (no offense, Bette.)
That spider was so lovely that I wrangled it out of the petal saddle it came into the house on and escorted it (by hand) back out to the Itoh peony bush to continue living out its gorgeous, opalescent life.
Given how fervently people avoid the topic of death (I should know 😆), this is a beautiful piece of writing that doesn’t make the contemplation bleak and unbearable. And a great reminder to take a Beaches day without a special cause.
For me, Beaches = PNW
Also, fantastic photo!
This piece hit me kind of hard. Don’t really know why .. maybe because I am in winter of my life and I haven’t stopped to think about this. On one hand, I was so thrilled and happy for you that you have your Beaches. You so deserve every minute of it. Such a peaceful place to be. On the reflective side, I couldn’t think of what my Beaches is. So now I’m thinking about that. You are an amazing writer Angela to inspire such deep thought in us.