Earlier this week, we went to the beach on vacation. This is my family (I’m the one in pink).
I have been very very inconsistent in this space lately, and that happens sometimes. But I am here now, and plan to connect every week again (like my to-do list tells me to.) So I’ll see you soon, thanks for reading. I’m so grateful for so many things, and one of them is you.
Last week, my family took a short vacation to a Delaware beach and here are a few observations from our time away.
Human beings continue to grow while the bathing suits continue to shrink, at an almost equal rate. There was more skin on very public display than I was prepared to see, and I just cannot imagine the hormonal overdrive my teenage sons were forced to manage. I guess the takeaway is that maybe the self-loathing body consciousness that so many deal with on a daily basis is disappearing. That’s a very good thing, but I’m left wondering what acceptable beach attire will be in 10, 15, 20 years. I also now understand the stodgy old folks who were always complaining that “nothing is left to the imagination.” If we are shown everything all the time, what are the consequences? I know I’m dangerously close to becoming stodgy and old, but there is something to be said for butterflies, anticipation, and those beautiful intimate things we share only with another, isn’t there?
At the beach we stayed (Rehoboth), masks were mandatory only on the boardwalk. That said, in one block, we counted 60 individuals without any sort of face covering. Why? Why do we so strongly resist this mandate? I was in a convenience store recently where NO ONE (including the employee) wore the masks the signs lied were required. This screaming rebellion is obviously an act of aggression, but against who? Me? (What did I do?) You? (What did you do?) The Governor? The entire government? Authority? Maybe it’s simply a re-claiming of our personal freedom. In that case, I can probably get on board with that. 1 question: Is this revolution against any and all forms of law? Or just this one? It’s just a mask. Honestly, I hate it, too. I miss your faces & smiles and to wear them forever seems like that might be too high a cost, but it’s been 3 months and maybe we’ve saved lives…but we all draw our battle lines in different places.
Speaking of masks, I ordered a sport mask in early April that hasn’t arrived yet. They sent another when I complained that also hasn’t arrived. If masks are so important, I wish we could get some. Or at least, I wish I could someday get mine. (There’s going to be a super nasty review on Amazon coming.)
On the way home from the beach, I discovered that there was a COVID-19 outbreak and anyone who was there should be tested immediately. So I’m mostly quarantined again. I’ve been waiting like an animal for my gym to open and it does tomorrow and I CAN’T GO!!! I still don’t know if it’s a “new normal” or if this, too, shall pass, but I do know I’m different than when this all began. My vision is clear and focused – many of the things that proved distracting are being excised. My restlessness is being replaced with patience, gratitude and kindness. There’s a renewed sense of meaning and purpose. And to be honest with you, that’s a pretty great place to be.
It’ll be fascinating to look back in 1 or 5 or 20 years to see who we all became.
This is going to be a very personal, difficult post to write…but I’m going to write it anyway. Maybe I’m just like ‘the kids’ today, where all of life is meant to be online, where it didn’t happen if it’s not on social media. It’s a logical extension of a movement that truly began in Madonna’s illuminating (and completely insufferable) documentary Truth or Dare, where Warren Beatty says, after Madonna refuses to talk to her doctor off-camera: “She doesn’t want to live off-camera, much less talk. There’s nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it’s off-camera? What point is there existing?” Or maybe I just want to be honest with my life. If I’m going to write a blog where we relate authentically, why would I hold such a meaningful piece of me back? (I want it to be that 2nd one. I don’t want to be Madonna or a Kardashian, so let’s all just agree and say it’s the 2nd and go from there, ok?)
I started in the sand at Rehoboth beach: As I lay here in my Speedo, I remember all of the time I spent fully dressed – self-conscious and embarrassed. I’d wear t-shirts in community pools, lakes, oceans…if I’d even go at all. Usually, I would lie about some made-up excuse and decline invitations. My body wasn’t perfect, lumpy where it should be flat and flat where it should have curves. [Who was it that decided what my body “should” look like? Who knows?]
How many times? How much did I miss?
I wouldn’t dig holes and make castles with my boys – something they absolutely LOVE to do (again, who knows why? The point is, they do) – because of how I would fold and my skin would roll. So they dug alone, and I watched from under layers of clothes and the chair extended enough to not scrunch my belly too much, sweaty and uncomfortable.
And for what? Why why why why why?????
Because THEY might think…um, what might they think?
That I wasn’t a professional athlete, bodybuilder or Abercrombie & Fitch model? That they might think I was just a person who is a child of the Living God, who leads a full life, loves his wife and children, works, writes, reads, eats great meals, likes jeans with a little stretch, and has no idea what his body fat percentage is or what his biceps measure?
That’s ok, because that’s precisely what I am. (Except for the biceps measurement – I know that.)
How much time and energy have I spent distracted, wishing I were someone else, with someone else’s waistline or skin or paycheck or wit or whatever, while another beautiful moment of my life passed right on by. The number on a scale or letter(s) on a shirt taking precedence to the people and the places around me. What a crushing tragedy!
How much of my life have I not been present?
I’m finishing on my sofa in Cleona: So. I’ve been coming along with this, finding some deliverance from the stern body image monster whispering in my ear, until Angel decides to post a few pictures on Facebook. She shows me first, because she’s kind and respectful and the sweetest woman this planet has ever known, and there it is…In the middle of a handful of perfectly lovely photos, there I am in, kind of sideways, more than kind of unflattering. You know how you sometimes see a picture of you and you ask, “do I really look like that?” The answer is always yes, and unflattering or not, this one is me, too. I wanted to un-check the box, but instead I handed her phone back and smiled, “They’re great!” Because they really, really are.
And I guess it’s small insignificant acts like those that are the things that really change us. We step out one tiny step further than we’ve ever gone, then there’s a brand new line waaaaay up there that’s scary and intimidating and we think, ok, we did this, but could never do THAT. Then we do, except it’s now just a small step because we’ve taken 100 microscopic tiptoes before this. Then another. And another.
And before we know it, this is our life and there we are, living it.
Love With A Capital L 