I will be renewed

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

I made reservations for the Cape May motel, the cheaper one that we went to last year, and the one with the thin walls.

Sometimes, it’s nice to hear it all, from the roar of the sea to the roar of bliss, and know that somehow it all connects in the soul.

My cycle of life runs from October to October, part of that ritual I guess kids get used to going to school. I still dread Mondays for the same reason, and Sunday nights, although Tuesdays with production sometimes gives me the same grief.

The sea has always been a source of strength to me, and going there creates a calm down in the bones more regular visits to the river can’t.

This year with the dolphins dying, I almost dread the beach walk. I do not want to see an intelligent being belly up.

But the need is nearly as great in me this year as it was last year, though I am stronger now, and have learned a lot about my ability to overcome adversity.

We all live with some inner strength we do not know until we are called upon to use it.

The sea feeds that part of me.

Maybe this comes from growing up in around boats, with my grandfather as a boat builder, and before that a bungalow builder. I still have the photos of my grandfather and father and mother and the old Hudson car in front of the family bungalow near Toms River – no doubt bulldozed out of existence to make way for condos.

But I recall those early days when my family brought me to the sea, and how amazed I was at seeing it, and how amazed I still am.

My grandfather loved the sea as well, and it is only irony that I make my way to Cape May each year just as he did in 1927 for his honeymoon. I even have some photos of that.

Sandy didn’t hurt that part of the world as it did farther up, in the Toms River area, and yet, I will think of that storm as I pass exit 82 and the most recent fire that turns out to be yet one more nasty bit caused by Sandy, salt water abusing the wires so that a fire could consume all those memories – the way the 1962 hurricane did in Cape May, altering everything, except for the sea itself.

I guess that’s the thing we all have to rely on, those things that are so much larger than us, things that can’t be changed by something even as powerful as a storm, the forces we can alter but not defeat, some of which are contained in us, and drawn upon, and renewed.

I will be renewed.