Happy Birthday Mom

You would be 79 in a few hours (16th). The Polish crew will welcome your birthday first, then Pittsburgh and then California. That is what you would be on Earth. As I quietly type I have just spent the afternoon volunteering to teach our Adult Learn to Swim program and attend the FFH’s mid afternoon Saturday swim practice. Big windows in the pool with blue skies and blooming daffodils outside. I spent almost 4 hours in the water, pruney fingers, birds singing as I left. We are likely on the edge of another cold front but today is beautiful. I loved working with the adult learn to swimmers; It isn’t easy to put yourself out there as an adult to learn new things, especially ones in spaces that are terrifying. Water and deep ends are scary spaces. Hypoxia is terrifying. And simply being an excellent swimmer does not make one an excellent teacher. Mechanics take of learning and teaching time. Mechanics take repetition. You would LOVE this program that Katie and Cory have crafted. You would have wanted to participate.

Mom grew up loving the water but her front crawl, her freestyle was a very strange version of the sidestroke kick and freestyle arms. It was a beautiful stroke but was neither efficient nor used in the Olympics. In her 50s, after her wonderful teenagers must have teased her about it for the zillionth time, my mother learned how to do the scissor kick and re-taught herself to breathe. It was impressive. It was still not fast at all, but she absolutely got a better cardiovascular workout and she absolutely struggled with that change. And her teenagers NEVER pointed out that were anyone taking splits, hers were no faster than they likely were with her fancy sidestrokish crawl. But she did it, she learned something new. She persisted. She was swimming laps multiple times a week until the day she had to have surgery in September of last year. She loved to swim. It absolutely calmed her brain.

I spent a week at her favorite place without her last week. New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Her parents “found it” and we were lucky when we were growing up— we would pile into the family station wagon, drivie down to NSB and stay with my grandparents. Because Mom and Dad continued to go in spring, as we had children– we continued to go. Mom and Dad emphasized the family vacation and made it happen–  everyone had a unit and their own space, but we cooked together, dug sandcastles together. The kids surfed, played shuffleboard, walked to Flagler together. I remember the first time that Phoebe fell asleep on my shoulder, I sat by the pool in the early evening with a gorgeous sky full of pink reflecting on the ocean– daring not to move and wake her. Oskar’s first trip was when he was 3 weeks. 

Being in her space without her was bittersweet. Because in truth- I loved being down there without her  at times when she was alive as much as I loved being down there with her. She was a pain in the ass about the refrigerator and worrying about food waste and what meals were going to be served, yet she made more trips to Publix than any other family member. She had a more difficult time with the ocean as we got older but she would walk the beach and she would swim her laps, always following directions like an oldest child does– swimming under the rope between the shallow and deep ends, in the maybe 19 yard pool. There were memories everywhere and they swooped in and wrapped themselves around me randomly — I envision Grief like a blanket that swoops in and wraps around you, and then she disappears as suddenly as she appeared.

When we were younger both she and her father would walk the beach, she continued as we aged until the issues with her hips and knee simply wouldn’t let her go as far. But even last year she took beach walks–just shorter ones. We always looked for shells. Our beach is a horrible shell beach and yet I still am always looking, always hoping. To find something whole, special. Something that survives the multiple sand bars and hard sand. NSB is a beach that you can drive your car onto– which is likely why its crashing surf breaks sand dollars almost always.

But I love listening to the water crash and I love walking the beach so this year I walked to the top and back almost daily. To the area where of the most shark bites (NSB is proudly the Shark Bite capital of the world, not the shark death capital) occur, where the surfers and fishermen are. On Wednesday after a few days with more melancholic moments that I anticipated though none of which in retrospect were surprising– I set off and commented to myself, in my head– “it would be awesome if you would show me that you were here Mom, without messing with the lights or freaking me out.”

As I walked the beach listening to my book on tape– and Mom would have LOVED Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt– I looked for shells and watched the water. At about mile 5 of 6 there was a small mostly intact sand dollar. Mostly means the entire inner star, the poinsettia, was intact, simply some of the round edge had been broken. It was my second intact sand dollar ever. 

I had started to look for intact sand dollars as early as I could remember. Buying them never felt right. I once found a bed of intact and alive ones in the inner coastal waterway- but I couldn't kill them, so I couldn’t take them. Once on my 40th birthday I was walking in a shallow part along a sandbar with my niece Reed, and we both bent down and found intact whole sand dollars. That was my very first one. The number of hours that I have spent in my lifetime  looking for one is embarrassing and likely incalculable.

So to find another fully intact one only 10 years later would likely be “spoiling” me. But this? Was it random? Coincidence? Mom? I chose to believe that somehow Mom was involved and heard me. She wasn’t leaving something so large and pretty and perfect- that wouldn’t have been Mom. It wouldn’t have been real. But small, beautiful and slightly dinged up? Yes. That would have been Mom. Something to say– it’s ok, I am ok, you will be ok, keep walking, keep looking and keep hoping for that intact sand dollar? 

That would be Mom.

Happy birthday Mom. I am so lucky that I had 50 of them with you and will miss your voice for the rest of my life. Even when you yelled at me. I am lucky that you married such a ridiculously loyal and funny man. I am lucky that you gave me a brother and a sister. I am lucky that you made me read books and write book reports over the summer when no one else had to do anything. I am lucky that you made me join a swim team even though I was in tears because I didn’t want to do it. I am so lucky that you encouraged me to do hard things and didn’t make it easy for me. I am so thankful that you always were positive  that we would be ok, that we would be fine. I am lucky that you rescued and adopted both people and pets as an example. I am so lucky that you loved my kids and Lolly’s kids as you have. Thank you for the sand dollar. I miss you.