Open Writing

I was floating, in what my husband calls my sea-otter position, drifting and dreaming, with my hands tucked under my chin. A lovely position in a calm sea on a warm, sunny day, just bobbing along watching the gannets sort out their next meal before that dramatic stoop and dive below the water. I saw old couples, our age, walking hand in hand along the beach and young families playing with their babies in the sand and the odd canoe makes its way across the bay. Not a bad place to think about life in general and of what lies ahead and to conjure up ideas for Open Writing. Safe within my safety zone.

The sea isn’t always so calm however; a few days ago a strong north-easterly brought in huge waves, great for riding but no good for swimming, but beyond the surf lay calm sea, or so I thought.

“Are you in your depth?” my husband called.

“What?” I shouted.

“In your depth?” he yelled.

I lowered my feet. The bottom was somewhere far below. Help! Not good on an outgoing tide. I noticed the distant buoy was really quite close and my husband’s head a long way off. I was out of my safety zone. It was great doing a bit of backstroke and generally messing around but I had failed to notice how far out I had drifted, so head down and a powerful crawl, not my usual style, brought me back to the shallows. You can never trust the sea, and wading ashore I realised what a rip tide there was. So on this particular calm afternoon, every so often I touched bottom, just to be sure I was within depth.

What was I thinking about, out here in this lovely water? The obvious of course and where to from here, as our daughter enters the next phase of her treatment. But life goes on and here we were a million miles from nowhere, floating about in the warm sea. So I got to thinking of the folk around us in this little piece of paradise. Every day languages from all over the world come and go, usually “one nighters’ in campervans, but some stay to discover Golden Bay. But it is the “old timers” who appear at this time of the year, the retirees. We keep moving up a notch each year, but fail to recognise it. We still do the same things, huff and puff up mountains each day and gather around the picnic tables at night to exchange stories, but we are beginning to realise that the climbs aren’t so high or so far, however we keep trying and plunge into the sea at regular intervals.

Yes every year the same faces pop up. We don’t exchange address with most of them, it’s strictly holiday friendship, but with others the email buzzes and Christmas cards arrive. This year is different though. It’s our “lick wounds” time. Our old friends in Milton have been great but we have found another little band waiting for us here. A chap spotted us sitting on the beach gazing at the view, he wasn’t aware that here was the only clear signal to the Vodaphone tower and our link with OZ was our priority. “Have you got a camera, this would make a great picture?” he asked, then he became aware of why we were there, a lovely man, a gentle smile and a few words about the weather and how many fish he had caught, brought us back to the real world, out of the rip tide.

The local potter up the road says “Great to see you back” then, “What’s up?” as he looks into our eyes. We explain then quickly move on to what’s been happening in the bay. The manageress of the campsite discovers my seventieth birthday is only a few days away and arrives with a huge iced cake covered with “Happy Birthday” and candles. We share it around and have the odd toast.

Life goes on but around us is this great group of supporting folk. Two old friends left today. We had acted the fool and laughed and joked together all week but this morning one of them put her hand on my knee and said, “If I believed I would pray but I will be thinking of you.”

Tomorrow two more arrive with their little dogs, they are coming to see us and no doubt we will have our “sundowners” around the picnic table, one of them is a Geordie and paints and we will talk of “home.” A middle aged couple, next to us, talk over coffee in the morning and join us for a swim before we head off in our own directions, they know why the cell phone rings and give us space and they know when to join us. Yes we are a varied mixture in this little corner.

So what am I trying to say? Just what a wonderful world we live in.

All around us waves crash and rip tides roar, wars rage and folk fall out, problems become out of proportion and “bad news” feeds journalists with information for their articles. But really here and elsewhere, where everyday life goes on, within depth, not alone in the big ocean, but in the safe harbours of our little communities, people look after each other and care, they aren’t “over the top,” just there when needed and everybody gets on with life. It’s this wonderful group of animals called “human beings,” just the ordinary folk in the street and the supermarket who know what life is really all about. So let the power seekers and the politicians get on with what they think is important while we, the ordinary folk, will simply continue to look after each other, keep smiling and make sure we stay within our depth.