I shouldn’t be here today. I should be in Northern California with my family (well most of it) and the ones that aren’t there…should be there as well but because I am not… they are not. I should be waking up and helping everyone get ready to launch our girl… my oldest niece… into symbolic “adulthood”. I should be there for her and with her… and I am not… and that is heavy. It is her Bat Mitzvah today. The day that she transitions from a “girl” to a “woman”. It’s a big day. There will be speeches given… prayers read… tears dropped… conversations about the past and the future… goals and dreams… congratulations and ‘Good Jobs’… and I really wish I could be sitting in the front row. Looking up at her… attempting to show her how genuinely proud I am of the human being she is and is becoming with each day that passes and that I am a better person for having the privilege to be in her orbit. I hope she feels that from where I sit.
And because I am here… and not there… the only thing that I could do to work through this mental angst that I am and have been feeling is get up early and walk. So I did. I’m walking the track at sunrise… it is a bit overcast but the beauty of the morning is in no way hidden by the clouds. As I am turning the far end of the track… making that left turn that I have made thousands of times over the past few years… I notice one of the massive cargo ships making it’s way into the port. I stop to watch it part the sea (I had to… given the day) and marvel in it’s presence. As it makes it’s way down the channel… the wake that is left in it’s path creates waves seemingly big enough to surf on. I watch as they get closer and closer to where I stand. I look down and see the medium sized “boulders” that slope up from the water’s edge… stacking on top of each other about 6 to 8 feet high to meet the earth and the gates that separate me from them. The white caps are close now and I feel myself getting a bit excited but also anxious for them to crash against the rocks. They begin to envelope the boulders… as the water blankets the area that the rocks used to be… the boulders are now gone… and water has taken it’s place.
I’m standing there… marveling at this seemingly meaningless event take place and I have this overwhelming feeling of synergy with those rocks and that ocean water. In one moment… they are separate entities. The boulders sit on top of each other… against the earth… bone dry and independent from the depths of water mere feet away. And in the next instant… they are one. Separate but together. I have this feeling of this whole situation being a representation of the life that I currently live with my ‘tribe’… with the world. We navigate life separately… but very much together. We are forced to experience this journey simultaneously from different vantage points but the root of the experience is the same. We walk through our daily lives in completely separate worlds but all it takes is one phone call or email… and we are together again. They travel from their lives to mine on those magical weekends and they wait outside the gates… separate from me on the other side of the wall… but eventually they are let in and we are separate no longer… we are together… if only for a few hours. We are living separately but together just as these boulders are separate from the ocean until the current pushes just hard enough and the ocean finds it’s way to be with them…if only for a moment. I smiled to myself… thinking I might be losing it… but also thinking how beautiful and heartbreaking this whole experience is.
In that moment… I felt very much “together” with my niece… with my ‘tribe’… I felt like the water had crescendoed against the rocks and although we were physically separate… we were unmistakably together. That the bond we share… the work that we put into that bond on a daily basis… is stronger than any separation that our lack of physical proximity to each other could attempt to create. And I know there will be many more days like today… where the heartbreak of ‘not being there’ will be almost too much to handle… but I hold onto the fact that the tide will rise and fall… and although we may be physically separate… we are also very much together.
There is a lesson in the coming and going of the ocean waves… the fact that their presence can completely change the landscape and allow the eye to either see or not see aspects of life that lie just below the surface. We must always remember that although we may not be able to see something… to feel someone… to reach out and hug them… that does not mean that the tide will not fall and they will be there… where they have always been…right there with us all along. And just as the rocks are to the ocean’s surface outside these gates or the sand at the beach is to that same ocean’s waves… we can very much be separate and together simultaneously… we just have to open our eyes and our hearts to recognize the magic.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Stay Together.