weekend

We spent the weekend near the water, a group of wonderful women and I. We watched waves run and curl and tumble. We listened to the roar rise and fall. We walked and talked and walked until we ran out of beach, and then climbed rocks until our bare feet were raw and frozen. We laid on our backs in the sand and watched stars shoot across the sky. We argued about how best to make the pyramid of wood catch on fire. We baked beer cheese bread that did not rise and was heavy and dense like a stone. We read books and wrote in journals and inspected all the colors of the sand. We laughed until our stomachs hurt and we could not breathe.

"Did you ever imagine," I asked two of them, "ten years ago, when we were in college, that in ten years the three of us would be hanging out on the [Gone West] coast?"

At the end, I stood on the shore and stared at the sky turning from fuschia to crimson to salmon to orange to rust, at the water rushing back to meet an incoming wave, at the evening star up above the clouds, and I felt deeply grateful. Not just for the beauty and the company but for the ability, finally, after a decade and a half of discontent, of always wishing for more, to enjoy the moments I have and the people I share those moments with.

I am going to love my thirties.