This Brave New Decade

The first full day of being seventy did not feel different from being sixty-nine.  I awoke early as I normally do out here where the morning light taps insistently on the windows.  It was a mild morning, already almost 60 degrees a little after 7:00 a.m., and I fell into the usual morning routine of Tai Chi out on the deck by the ocean, breakfast back in the condo, and then my first cup of coffee back on the deck.

It was Sunday, and we drove across the causeway bridge to the Methodist Church in Morehead City again, where two adorable children were baptized and some of my favorite hymns were sung - "Faith of our Fathers" and "My Faith Looks Up to Thee."  We also heard some beautiful hand bells, and everybody sang Happy Birthday to a woman in the choir who had just turned 90.  That made me feel young!

The wind picked up after lunch; there was a gale warning, with winds out of the southwest 20 to 30 knots, and gusts up to 40 knots - that's 46 miles per hour for those of us who are not sailors.  Despite the warning, I bundled up in my Gore Tex against the wind and ventured out, determined to walk on the beach.  What a wild and exhilarating afternoon it was!  The wind had completely wiped away footprints and tire tracks and was sending rivulets of white over brown, rippling the dunes, and pushing up wide swaths of foam from the surf.  The foam would quiver madly in the wind, and then a few pieces would fly away like tumbleweeds in a dust-storm.

In the distance I could see a tiny figure walking, and on the way to the pier I finally passed him or her, bundled up like me, pants legs whipping wildly in the wind.  It was not cold, bundled against the wind and hands jammed tight in my pockets.  Every few minutes, a weak, milky-looking sun would try unsuccessfully to break through.  But I had the beach mostly to myself.

"I don't think you would have enjoyed it," I told Martha when I returned, cheeks red from the salt spray.  She understood that it was somehow important to me this day to push myself a little harder, to face the wild wind, now that I am in this brave new decade.