Neruda, the Beach, and Line Dried Sheets

An apology, of sorts. I left my blog with a post in October, and without fully intending to quit, I did. Without a further word. And for that, I am sorry.

Anything not used is going to atrophy, but left unused too long, it will also leave an ache, a vague sense of grief for something lost. It took me a while to pin it down, but I realized writing meant more to me than I had ever admitted. I needed to get back to it, even though it felt like I was wrestling body, soul, and spirit to get something down on paper.

My wise and delightful blogging and Facebook friend, Pearl, came to Texas and we spent a weekend on the beach to write. To throw around pleasing words. To read and reread exquisite sentences from Neruda and Chabon. To laugh at talking grackles, muse about lutefisk, and enjoy the passing stream of humanity.

When I slipped out onto the balcony with notebook in hand just as the sun pushed its way above the horizon, with chilly air and a faint salt spray opening my nostrils and loosening those channels I had plastered over in October, I was ready.

I wrote longhand in two notebooks. I scratched through words, used arrows to insert new ones, and filled more than 26 pages in a rapid cursive/print hybrid.

I breathed in deeply at a pause and remembered. In our home, which had also been my grandparents’ home, my husband and I left intact a small cabinet filled with my grandma’s dishtowels, aprons, and other things. I rarely open it, but when I do, I bury my face deeply in those towels and aprons. I inhale until my lungs are full. It smells like them. I can still faintly detect my grandma’s perfume, the aromas of her Sunday dinners, their line dried sheets.

That is how it felt on this balcony in those early morning hours. I inhaled deeply and caught a whiff of something that is just as much a part of me as those Sunday dinners and my grandma's perfume, as my grandma and grandpa and those line dried sheets.

And so I’m back.  Good to see you, friends.

To read Pearl's account of how we got lost on the beach, go here: I Think I Recognize That Dune