I'm a lucky girl.
I have an amazing family, a job that makes me happy, a house that's all my own, I live in one of the most beautiful places in the country and I've found a handsome friend who loves me.
Yet, even though these things are never far from my mind, I am sometimes blown over by the beauty and the fact that THIS is MY lot in life. I felt that way on a recent trip to the beach. I convinced my handsome friend to go camping for a night (in the same campground we started our early July trip) and then we headed up the coast and stayed three nights in a house with my family. For the most part, it was a great trip. Not without some family drama, but that's not what this is about.
What this is partly about is the fact that my family genuinely likes each other. We don't get to spend enough time all together but the time we do get, I feel we spend well. We drank beer, walked on the beach, laughed, teased, cooked, played games and sat in the company of one another. The two new additions to our "family vacation" were my nephew-- a fun well adjusted 9-year-old and my handsome friend.
I wasn't nervous about bringing him along, but curious about how it would go. How would they react to them? How would he deal with their brand of crazy? How would I feel with him there? It was better than I would have imagined...as truly most things with him are. (Why am I so worried about everything?) The answers to the questions were as follows:
They did as they always do, made room for one more, listened when he had something to say, talked, gently teased him and passed him their beers to try.
He hardly blinked at their crazy (maybe because he is familiar with mine). He took two naps as breaks and rolled his eyes fewer than four times. He cooked amazing macaroni and cheese that my mom is still talking about. He let me vent, a lot, when my family was frustrating me.
How did I feel about him being there? I didn't question it once. He was supposed to be there.
The other thing this post is about is the beach at Seal Rock. Just south of Newport in Central Oregon is a place that I don't think I've ever been before. Growing up we spent almost every major family vacation on the Oregon Coast, driving up and down hunting agates and spotting seals. We have favorite spots that are totally out of the way and beaches we frequented that were just a few miles from where we almost always stayed. But we'd never spent any time at Seal Rock.
Handsome friend and I stopped on a whim when we had a half hour to kill before meeting up with my family. It was beautiful, but we didn't have time to get close. Just enough time to look and decide that we should come back, preferably at low tide.
Sunday, before we packed up and headed east, my mother, my handsome friend and I did just that. We probably got there about 8...the tide was low and there were more tide pools than I had ever seen. "It's like being underwater." He remarked and as I counted more than 7 types of sea weed...laying down awaiting the return of the water I knew he was right. It was a glimpse into another world. There were waterfalls and starfish (both orange and purple), teeny tiny fish and crabs, green and pink anemones, barnacles, muscles and oysters. There were also people, young and old and even a few not very adventurous looking canines picking their way across this exposed landscape. We were not the only ones up early to bear witness to this gift. Because that's what it felt like, an unexpected present, one that made me nearly giddy.
"Look at this, Look at that." I kept pointing, most likely sounding like an annoying little kid. I felt like Ruby, wanting to wiggle and bounce out of pure excitement and joy. It was totally worth getting up early. (Oh, and you should totally click on the picture so you can get an inkling of how cool this place was, but only from a distance, it was a different sort of cool close up.)
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