A Beautiful Moment

Guess what guys? I'm pregnant!

No, I'm not, just kidding. It's just that two other bloggers announced their pregnancies this week and I wanted to make you all gasp at the possible coincidence. Haha. :) :) Congrats to Nina and Meredith!

OK, but the real post today is a little about my last week, which was super great because my friend Mary came to visit from the US (hence my disappearance from the internet world). I'll write the full post once I've got all of her pictures, but I just wanted to tell you all about a nice morning Mary and I shared while she was here.

I hope Mary doesn't mind me telling you a little bit about her. When she was seventeen, two years before we met in our literature classes at Berkeley, she had a skiing accident that caused a lot of damages to her back and everything below, mainly her spine and her feet. The road to recovery has been long, and Mary's still on it, but she's the most adaptable and resilient person I've ever met. She's one of those rare people who learns a lesson in optimism from a serious trauma, who realizes the value in making the most of life and who really does put that idea into every one of their actions and decisions.

Mary and I spent a few days of her trip at the in-laws' beach house. On our last day there, the weather was cool; the sky was cloudy and it was raining just a bit. But Mary came down the stairs in her bathing suit and a dress and had decided that she wanted to go swimming in the ocean anyway. I was feeling cold and lazy but wasn't going to say no to her polite enthusiasm.

Mary's step is still a bit slow, so we took our time walking down to the water. When we go to the shore, we left our towels and dresses on the sand to be made muddy by the drizzle. We stepped into the water tentatively. I thought it chilly; Mary, traveling here from her new home in Oregon, rejoiced in the ocean's relative warmth. After only a minute or two of wading, she was ready to dive right in. I held back a bit, futilely wiping the raindrops off my glasses and mentally preparing myself for the rush of chilly water reaching my abdomen.

And there, in the choppy ocean, in the inseparable spray, was Mary: a mermaid, a dolphin, a woman celebrating life. She wasn't one to waste an opportunity: it was her last chance on the trip to swim in the open ocean of the tropical Atlantic, and she wasn't going to pass it up. While I frowned at the frigid splashing, she said thank you to the sea and the sky for their union; she said thank you to her muscles and her bones for theirs; and she swam.

I couldn't help but be inspired. My dear friend showed me the beauty of the moment. I gave in, held onto my glasses, and went under. We frolicked like a pair of otters, and happily tired ourselves out. When we walked home in our bathing suits, in the rain, it didn't matter that we were wet or that our clothes were wet or that our towels were wet because it was just water and water makes life cleaner and smoother and the day was gray but gorgeous.

Thanks for being great, my friend!