Solstice, Light, and Grief
June brings me to a shore place I’ve returned to for most of my adult life. I pass dozens of houses rented in seasons past, remember the bicycle rides where I once dodged scooters and skateboarders. New businesses crop up and familiar ones disappear. Yesterday, we discovered a new restaurant with extraordinary food, more akin to New York City than a tiny beachside town. There are other surprises like this flowered china teacup glued to a post in the midst of a flower garden. I returned to look at it and it transformed into a gathering of people in operatic style finery, sipping tea amid the roses, hydrangea, honeysuckle, and lilies. Whimsy is an integral part of this town. I miss it when I leave. It is as if I’m entering a story and I never know how it will play out. The alleyways, porticos, murals, and street musicians add to the enchantment.
Someone hurt me so I walked five miles, paused to smell roses and honeysuckle —my favorite, pocketed a perfect rock, and bought a flamboyant scarf and glittery stud earrings. All of this slowed my heart rate and cleared my head. There is much to be sad about in the world today and I know a personal hurt is tiny in the larger context. I also know that how we relate to others is a reflection of how we interact in the larger world. I strive to be kind and though I don’t always succeed, I continue to work at it. I love people–babies, toddlers, children, teens, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety somethings and beyond. All have something to offer and I try to view interactions with curiosity and enthusiasm. I can’t control the world around me but I can vote, volunteer, help a child, write books. My power in the world is my ability to write and connect with people. One of the reasons I enjoy public readings is the interaction. How can I write without experiencing? How can I understand the impact of my words without listening to others?
I am grateful to be in this place for a short time. I carry within the sharp smell of the ocean at low tide, the broken shells, the skittering crabs and doe-eyed seals, and so many unparalleled sunsets here. I’m working on the third draft of my second novel and I will go back to that, hoping that one day soon that story, a very different one from the one that will be published next spring, will find a good publisher. My characters are never people I know but I hope they are as complex, infuriating, and redeemable as most of us.
A woman in dreadlocks left her large gold purse on the bench and I reported it to the yellow clad police officer who looked through it to find her name. A man let me pet his small dog that he said was not a puppy, the barista with kind brown eyes and a thin moustache made me a perfect latte, Beverly at our favorite ice cream place knows everyone by name. Tonight, friends in town will drop by and in a few days, more friends will share a bonfire on the beach and s’mores. The air is crisp and the ocean cool but not freezing. This is the 2024 summer solstice, a summer of change, upheaval, and hopefully healing.
Literary Imaginings by Lisa C. Taylor 