we're thinking the same thing

Darah and Tanner had a baby two nights ago, eight days early. Tanner included me in a text thread of unfamiliar numbers, first with an update that they’d made it to the hospital, in a room, that the doula was on the way — and then, incredibly!, a few hours later, that Baby was in the world and everyone is healthy and They Did It. This is not my first friend to have a baby, but there is something deeply special about this one, about this perfect family. Darah first told us that she was pregnant floating upon a raft on mirrored water in the summer. We brought a watermelon with us and left it, uncut, in a bed of pine needles on the shore.

By December, Darah was too pregnant to come to Cumberland Island for New Years Eve, but we’ll show the baby this special place as soon as she’s ready. Alex, Cat, Jonny, and I spent the last days of the year on the island, an extra day longer than originally planned because of the holiday ferry schedule. What a gift, this extra day. We laid on the beach, spooning under blankets, pointing out constellations, falling in and out of gentle sleep, until midnight. We watched the tiny fireworks on the next island sparkle silently just above the horizon.

I found my first sharks’ teeth at Raccoon Keys, at the south end of the island. Cat is a master seeker; she has film canisters full of teeth she’s found. Her affinity for spotting teeth along the road, while walking and hardly looking, reminds me of Olivia and her talent for spotting four leaf clovers. When we graduated from high school, Olivia pressed a four leaf clover she’d found for every graduating student, 170 of us. Last year, the beach was littered with angels’ wings; this year, olive and moon snail shells were abundant. Whelk egg casings look like long paper lanterns. A diagram of the different shell types collected by a Ladies’ Shell Club is framed above the water fountain at sea camp. There’s one called a lady’s ear or something like this — it’s flat and curving and beautiful. In the afternoon in winter, the light on the beach across the sand looks like an I Spy book. Every shell is lit so starkly, and the shadows cast a dark grey across the sand.

I’ve cried so much in the last week — really, since the beginning of the year, but especially more recently. Everywhere: in the kitchen, in my car in the driveway, in the high tunnel, at my desk, in the bathroom at work, in my house, pacing. Wednesday was another snow day, and I spent the morning sobbing (unrelated to, but I’m sure exacerbated by, the snow and weirdness of the day). Wracking, heaving, bigger-than-my-throat sobs, until I felt completely emptied out, hollowed, exhausted. I am so tired. The grief is for time passing, for choices made and not made, for the realization that, for all the parallel universes and realities that I’m certain are buzzing alongside this plane, it is this one, this life, that I can’t wake up from – this is the one I’m inhabiting full time; the others I can visit only fleetingly. Oh my god. In a message last week, Theo described an inverse architecture, one that is constructed of all the choices not made and paths not taken, a bizarro counterpart to this waking life. Depending on the day, this feels either expansive or devastating, or both. Both are always both.

— two sides of the same coin. Last week, maybe Tuesday, I woke up early and drove to work as the sun was rising. Across the painted sky, pink and red and orangey and clear, a big flock of swifts swooped all in unison at the Lee Street highway exit, from a set of telephone wires, up to a tree, back down to the parking lot, then over the Popeye’s. They move like fabric in a breeze, each body part of a bigger body that undulates and quivers. I was listening to this song, witnessing this most gorgeous and truly unbelievable feat of synchronicity and elegance, and I am so glad to be overcome by something so gorgeous, and so early in the morning. And the music! And the birds! And I feel possible and ebullient and like I want to laugh and laugh and sing and say hello to everyone.

In late spring, I would like to set up a long table that curves like an unending “s” in the backyard. It’s easier to reach across to talk this way, than when we’re sitting all in a row, in straight lines. On the table, each place setting is in keeping with the spirit of the party, but each is singular. A tiny fork, here. A special plate, the one with the drawings all over, here. No one is wed to their seat at the table; we trade places as conversations bloom. This is a party in May, so the first flowers from the yard fill vases and jars and other funny receptacles arranged down the table length, in no particular pattern or scheme, just where they fit. Salads and pastas are passed around in big bowls. Candles burn out and are relit. None of the chairs match. We’re drinking fizzy lifting drinks, hovering gently above our seats. Maybe there is music, but when the iPhone dies or the speaker gets fuzzy and cuts off, no one notices. We eat little scoops of lavender ice cream from angels’ wings shells, collected from Cumberland Island. String lights dangle in the trees and stretch across the yard, casting just enough light so that everything glows. I look around and feel absolutely full to the brim with pleasure, delight, gratitude. When the last guest leaves, I don’t feel alone.