Shards of Beauty

Sometimes life is too full.  It overwhelms.  There are days I feel so much I wind up numb.

There are moments anymore where I don't know whether I'm in the throes of hormonal shifts, or I've simply reached a stage of my life where I cannot look back over so many years without stumbling into emotions of all kinds.  I miss people and places and situations that will never come again.  I look forward knowing certain opportunities have passed, and yet at the same time I don't feel limited because life is full of so much.

A couple of weeks ago my son and I went to our Latin lesson and the teacher didn't show.  We reviewed our notes a bit, wrote phrases on the white board (we left up a sentence that roughly translates to "Take your things and leave!" because it amused us), and then left early because we could.  It was beautiful out, so with our extra time we stopped at the beach.



The Milwaukee side of Lake Michigan is not as pretty as the Michigan side.  The beaches I've been to are softer over there, the waves more inviting to swimmers.  But there is much to love on our side, too, it just takes a better eye.

We walked along the edge of the water and decided to collect sea glass (or "lake glass" as my son declared was more accurate).  There's a lot of it once you start looking.  It comes in green, brown, and clear.  Some pieces were pleasantly smooth and scuffed.  A few still had rougher edges.  Any pieces that were pointy and technically still just litter we tossed back into the lake to let the waves and time tumble them into treasure that we might retrieve on a future visit.

It was a lovely little trip to the beach.  But I kept looking at my son and feeling amazed at how much he's grown and how fast it all goes.  Someday I will look back with as much astonishment on his eleven year old self and wonder how he was ever so young.  This moment will be just another memory to sift through, tumbled smooth by time.

I see my kids moving toward adulthood and heading down paths I know but that have been repaved.  I wonder what they will think and feel when they reach this stage.  I wonder if by then I'll be one of the things they miss.