Excerpt #9: At Last

Jackie was hanging out in her “thin phase”; no sense of time or even of being, just a mist-like ever-presence everywhere. Never knowing how long she stayed in this state until awakened, the crooning voice of one of her favorites, Etta James, came through, ““At last…My love has come along…”

“Anna’s here. Wonderful!”

She collected herself up in a warm glow and beamed that megawatt smile down on her daughter.

Anna stretched and awakened in her sand-colored downy nest-bed, her first morning on Plum Island; Mum’s Beach. She languished for a while, grinning happily, knowing she had no agenda. Always a social person, more herself in a crowd than without, Anna had come to cherish being alone. Funny, how even after all these years, she still had to explain herself, defend her “aloneness” to those around her. She spread out like a starfish, then contracted her limbs, making “sand angels” in this gloriously cozy bed, reveling in her timeless state. Eyes closed as she lay, spread-eagled as once she had on the back deck of her home in the redwood mountains of California, she felt warmth on her face. Opening one eye, she looked out the wide, narrow window above her. There. A gentle golden light steadily pouring through, highlighting the edges of the puffy “cotton candy clouds” in the blue morning sky. “Hi mom,” Anna smiled sweetly. She got up on her knees and faced the window, tilting her face up to the sun in the sky. “What’s this year going to be about, then?” she asked.

Anna rolled out of the comfort of bed into the kitchen. She indulgently sauteed large mushrooms and poured them on top of scrambled eggs and sharp cheddar cheese. She would never do this in her own home; her husband had a severe, wretched reaction to the smell of mushrooms. As the aroma filled the kitchen she laughed and thought, “I bet he can smell this 3,000 miles away.” After eating, she strolled around this jewel of a home she was renting, noticing three copies of a book sitting on the bookshelf by the woodstove. “Well, this one must be worth reading,” she mused. At home, she would often pick up a cheap, used paperback copy of a cherished book to keep on her bookshelf. That way, if a friend or family member asked for a good book, she could give a copy freely, not hoping for its return. Books were her beloved friends. She kept them close, even if not opening one up and visiting its pages for years and years.

Sitting down on the absurdly comfy “napping couch”, Anna opened to a random page in this newly acquired book, “Gift from the Sea.”

Page 42: “Solitude, says the moon shell. Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of attainment.”

“Of course,” mused Anna. The sketch of the moon shell at the start of the chapter was of her favorite shell found on the island. One that she would collect and place by her computer as she wrote each summer. She delighted in how surprised she was, even though each summer brought these affirmations, that she was in exactly the right place in time.

Page 43: “The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary of our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it-like a secret vice!”

“Yep.” Anna recalled how, from time to time during her yearly 3,000-mile journey to Mum’s Beach, she kept it secret, not wanting to offend those she loved. How she had to explain and rationalize, first to herself, then to others, that this was her time; no one else’s. She felt an urge to write in the pages of this book, as she once wrote in the pages of that copy of “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire sitting in the airport, waiting for her flight to Plum Island one year after her mother had died. Those first words on paper becoming the first turnings of the book that would become her mother’s story.

Instantly she thought, “I want to meet this woman, this woman who owns three copies of this book, who creates such artistry in her lovely home, and shares it willingly, lovingly, with others.” On the front door of this home were four words, “Come in and Rest.” So lovely. So perfect. “I’m going to text her,” she decided.

“Oh, Karen. I am reading “Gift from the Sea” and I am astounded. I never expected to find so familiar a book, for I have come to Plum Island every year for ten years to write the story of my mother, whose ashes I scattered here those ten years ago. And thank you for the generous welcome basket. In gratitude, Anna.”

The response was immediate:

“Oh, my!” Take the book home. I have several copies, your mother’s era. I too adored and admired my mother. So lovely a healing experience for you annually. Xoxo.”

Tears welling in her eyes, Anna selected a blue marking pen and sat down with the book again, circling, commenting, highlighting and marking pages.

Page 44: “Actually these are among the most important times in one’s life-when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.”

Anna turned to the cover to find the author’s name. Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She knew, had her mother read this book, that that bit of wisdom would have been copied into one of the journals she wrote in and then sent to Anna upon filling up.

Gentle wings started fluttering in the center of her chest, making it impossible to read any more. She breathed deeply, yet the air inside the house would not do.

She loaded her sand-colored beach bag; a few pages from a notepad, a pen, a bottle of water, a blanket, and the “Gift from the Sea.” She walked along the road to where it dead-ended at the dunes. Green perky tufts of grass triumphantly dotted the sand hills, steadfastly holding the ever-shifting earth they were planted in. The path to the water opened up on her left. As she walked the path to the ocean, her heart seemed to quiver and expand with every step. The smile in her heart gave way to the smile blooming on her face. Effortless. No tiny angels needed to lift the corner of her mouth.

At last.

Again, she was astonished at the sense of rightness and peace that became hers.

Again, she tilted her head up to the sky.

“At last…” The music and words of Etta James crooned on gentle, warm winds that blessed and caressed her face. “…My love has come along…”

“My lonely days…are over…” Jackie sang, in her trembling British lilt.

“…And life is like a song…” Anna sang out loud, each step becoming a stride, feeling her muscles awaken on this early morning, her heart opening wide to the endless ocean that stretched out before her; to the vast adoration that was her mom.