first of all: yes

I can remember absolutely everything about the first time we met: the clothes she was wearing, the expression on her face, where she was sitting. The way I felt about her shoes. And that, straight away, there was this burning desire to know her, to be known by her: an almost frantic desperation to discover some grounds upon which we might connect. She claims that she felt the same way, and that I played it all cool, and that she never would have guessed I was feeling it, too. We may have exchanged a few words. But we didn't fall in love on that day, as the story might want to go. 

In truth, I'm not sure when or where or how, exactly, we fell in love. It happened quite by accident, over the course of years, and we held off on realizing it until the whole thing was very much established. I woke up one morning and knew. I knew the whole weight of it. And it was only then that I could look back, and remember the day I first saw her, and all that had--so innocently--transpired between us since that initial meeting. I laughed at myself for not having gotten it sooner. And thanked God for having spared us the realization before then.

Our love story has no place. But when I've pictured where we might someday wed (and what she might be wearing, and how her hair might be styled loosely and purposefully, all at once), I've often seen us at the ocean. There's something about the veracity of the sea that has felt relevant to each of us in relation to the unfolding of--and the process of giving ourselves over to--our love, even though the actual facts (time spent together at the beach, for example) don't necessarily support our claiming it in this way.

Last week, we went, finally, for our first visit to the ocean, and--as we had somehow known it would--our love felt maybe especially fiercely-alive and irrefutable in its presence.








We were only four of us (having left the boys back home), but we were a family and we felt like a family. 

"I think you should get married," she said, carefully. "Because married people love each other even more than people who just love each other. And so, that would be good for you to be married." And then she danced a little ballet in the low-tide puddles, and we wished together to find a sand dollar, whole, and then, just like that: we found one. 

The sand was exceptionally soft, the water was unusually warm, the sun shone brightly (though it had been forecast to rain). And I was, of course, blown away by her beauty. And by the beauty of everything around us. 

Maybe there is something to this notion that the sea has somehow been an instructive participant in our union. Perhaps we have felt ourselves given to this love just as the ocean is given to the moon. Maybe what is happening between us, what has been somehow known from the very start, is very much of the same breed of magnetism and gravity. Maybe that's just what falling in love is. 

Like exploding sun/ Let the light unfurl/ Been a million years full of fears/ But I found my girl.

we went to the beach

In the very last gasp of summer, because I wanted to and because I'd told them I would, I took my babies to the ocean. And I fell in love with everything all over again. 

Every thing: these salty children, this warm sun, countless sea-smooth and perfectly colorful stones, the sea herself: so angry and so soft. And also: my lover back home, the daughters I long to truly belong to (and to share this love of sand, and of salt and of wind with), and even: the other mother of my sons, she who once was here, also, reading her book, laughing, collecting treasures, beside me, marveling at the joy of these children who were born of our love.

I expected to feel alone, to feel like the single mother with all so many children, bogged down with bags of towels and snacks, beach chair hanging off one shoulder, toddler monkeyed on hip, 4-year-old grasping at belt loop. And I did. I saw their eyebrows rise, and then furrow, as they tried to figure me out, those other families on the beach.

And at first I thought: shit, dude. This is a mess. And then, in the next breath, as the next loud and lusciously alive wave crashed against the shore, I claimed it: I am the single mother with all so many children, and I am so happy to be here. And I busied myself with doling out granola bars, and applying sunscreen, and photographing my babies as they played with their most favorite ocean friend. 

We always loved the ocean in the old life, and we loved it just as much in the new life.

We slept together, the four boy-children and I, in a cozy nest of a bed in our sweet family tent. We all slept solidly and comfortably, and then woke up early to head back to the beach. And at the end of our second, long, sunny day, we packed into our sandbox of a minivan and drove all the way back home. And it was past 10:00 when I dropped them off at their Mama's house, and apologized for their still-salty hair, and kissed them each on the forehead, and then turned the car around, and drove straight to town, and to her house, where I slipped easily back into the arms of my beloved.

And she breathed in my ocean smell, and protested my desire to shower it off, and listened while I told of starfish and humpback whales, and lobster rolls eaten on the bay-side. And we dreamed of next summer, when we might all go back, and be a family in-love-with-the-beach, together. And we dreamed of the summer after that (or after that, or after that?) when we might all go back: all the mamas, and the papa, and whoever else wants to be a part of it when we get there.

Sometimes, the ocean is really, absolutely enough. 

We really are going to make this work, aren't we?