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Message in a Bottle
Friday, May 5, 2006
3:17:00 PM PDT
Feeling Happy
Hearing NPR Radio
A washed-up romance.
Who hasn’t spent a lazy afternoon beach combing on some secluded
shoreline around here? After all, this is an island, and that should mean
all around prime possibilities tossed into the flotsam, jetsam and general
driftwood.
While I have noticed a huge increase in the garbage on the beach
in the last year, I still (carefully) walk the beaches with my head down,
on the look-out for such treasures as agates and blue glass and perfectly
round rocks and heart-shaped rocks and pieces of wood that look like something else.
Sometimes after a storm, we collect a bunch of sea kelp bulbs and
make faces on them out of little bits of this and that we find. We
turn them into puppets and more often than not drag them home
to finally fall apart on the porch.
Other times we make “floaties”, which are boats we construct
out of old pieces of Styrofoam, (sadly, there’s a lot to be had), and
we equip them with masts and sails, this, too, mostly made out
of wire, garbage sacks, and other trash in the tide line. After sailing
them, we drag home these boats, more popular than any present or
gift from the grandparents, where they, too, fall apart on the porch
and oddly, disappear.
It’s not often we find anything of value. Well, actually, never,
except for the time I threw a “wishing rock” over my shoulder,
hoping for health and happiness and five minutes later found
a bottle with a dollar bill in it. That was quite a day. Since then,
I always check the bottles for booty. Twice we have found bottles
with messages that say write your name and when and where you
found this and throw it back in. One was from Gold Beach and one
was from Brown’s Point.
So of course I was curious when my son told me he and his “sitter”
Lizzy found a message in a bottle while they were down at the beach.
They brought it back, but Lizzy couldn’t read it very well, and it was
drying out on his bed.
What this time, I wondered, smoothing out the lined yellow
paper. Dated March 9, 2001. ( Only it looked like Zool.) Really bad
handwriting, I thought, or someone who’s first language isn’t
English? Hmmm? Or someone in a really unstable place or someone
with bad arthritis...”Dear Janet” I read, “You’re in my heart, thoughts,
prayers.”
Oh my gosh! A love letter! Do I keep reading? Do I encroach
on this message of hope and desire? Of course I do. “Can we get
together in Chicago?”Then something waterlogged. “I hope to see you Sunday afternoon....something, something. Call me between 10 a.m.
and 4 p.m. Always,” and the guy’s name.
And the guy’s ship’s name. A name I couldn’t read, but must
be one that passes between the Port of Seattle or Port of Tacoma and
the world.
I looked at my watch. It was Sunday. It was 2 p.m. Janet
would just have time! A rendezvous with her sailor!
I dialed the number next to Janet’s name. (A 503 area code, so this
spontaneous gesture was costing me about twelve cents already.)
A message machine. This is Jan...blah blah. So after the
beep, I say I found
the message in a bottle and he is waiting for her to call, and that’s about it.
I didn’t leave my number or name. Because I really don’t want to
know how it ends. I don’t even want to know how it started or
any of the details. I don’t know if Janet likes the guy, why they’d
meet in Chicago, why he put the message in a bottle. He had her
number, but maybe he was afraid to call her. Maybe he didn’t have
a phone--but then, how could she call him? Ship to shore? Laptop?
I’m glad Lizzy and Hart brought the message in the bottle
home from the beach--these days when much of the stuff that’s important
to kids is in stores or ads, they recognized a little possible magic washing
ashore. And that in itself gives me hope for a happy ending.
Written by slvrwd Blog about this entry |
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digg this
3:17:00 PM PDT
Feeling Happy
Hearing NPR Radio
Message in a Bottle
Who hasn’t spent a lazy afternoon beach combing on some secluded
shoreline around here? After all, this is an island, and that should mean
all around prime possibilities tossed into the flotsam, jetsam and general
driftwood.
While I have noticed a huge increase in the garbage on the beach
in the last year, I still (carefully) walk the beaches with my head down,
on the look-out for such treasures as agates and blue glass and perfectly
round rocks and heart-shaped rocks and pieces of wood that look like something else.
Sometimes after a storm, we collect a bunch of sea kelp bulbs and
make faces on them out of little bits of this and that we find. We
turn them into puppets and more often than not drag them home
to finally fall apart on the porch.
Other times we make “floaties”, which are boats we construct
out of old pieces of Styrofoam, (sadly, there’s a lot to be had), and
we equip them with masts and sails, this, too, mostly made out
of wire, garbage sacks, and other trash in the tide line. After sailing
them, we drag home these boats, more popular than any present or
gift from the grandparents, where they, too, fall apart on the porch
and oddly, disappear.
It’s not often we find anything of value. Well, actually, never,
except for the time I threw a “wishing rock” over my shoulder,
hoping for health and happiness and five minutes later found
a bottle with a dollar bill in it. That was quite a day. Since then,
I always check the bottles for booty. Twice we have found bottles
with messages that say write your name and when and where you
found this and throw it back in. One was from Gold Beach and one
was from Brown’s Point.
So of course I was curious when my son told me he and his “sitter”
Lizzy found a message in a bottle while they were down at the beach.
They brought it back, but Lizzy couldn’t read it very well, and it was
drying out on his bed.
What this time, I wondered, smoothing out the lined yellow
paper. Dated March 9, 2001. ( Only it looked like Zool.) Really bad
handwriting, I thought, or someone who’s first language isn’t
English? Hmmm? Or someone in a really unstable place or someone
with bad arthritis...”Dear Janet” I read, “You’re in my heart, thoughts,
prayers.”
Oh my gosh! A love letter! Do I keep reading? Do I encroach
on this message of hope and desire? Of course I do. “Can we get
together in Chicago?”Then something waterlogged. “I hope to see you Sunday afternoon....something, something. Call me between 10 a.m.
and 4 p.m. Always,” and the guy’s name.
And the guy’s ship’s name. A name I couldn’t read, but must
be one that passes between the Port of Seattle or Port of Tacoma and
the world.
I looked at my watch. It was Sunday. It was 2 p.m. Janet
would just have time! A rendezvous with her sailor!
I dialed the number next to Janet’s name. (A 503 area code, so this
spontaneous gesture was costing me about twelve cents already.)
A message machine. This is Jan...blah blah. So after the
beep, I say I found
the message in a bottle and he is waiting for her to call, and that’s about it.
I didn’t leave my number or name. Because I really don’t want to
know how it ends. I don’t even want to know how it started or
any of the details. I don’t know if Janet likes the guy, why they’d
meet in Chicago, why he put the message in a bottle. He had her
number, but maybe he was afraid to call her. Maybe he didn’t have
a phone--but then, how could she call him? Ship to shore? Laptop?
I’m glad Lizzy and Hart brought the message in the bottle
home from the beach--these days when much of the stuff that’s important
to kids is in stores or ads, they recognized a little possible magic washing
ashore. And that in itself gives me hope for a happy ending.
Written by slvrwd Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
