I am sitting on the sand while my three beloved grandchildren run in and out of Lake Erie’s waves at Cleveland’s Huntington Beach. I’ve taken the day off work to savor our time together. I never even think to open the book I brought. Instead I am watchful while at the same time caught up in my own wonderings, the way elders have surely been for millennia.
From even a short distance every wet head bobbing up in the water is dark, every happy shout is unintelligible. Time shifts the way it sometimes does. This scene could just as easily be 100 years ago, when Cleveland Metroparks made this beach a public recreation area and summer-weary families came here to cool down. This could be hundreds of years ago, the shoreline rimmed by huge sycamore trees, land crisscrossed by bison trails, with the Erie peoples’ large palisaded villages a short walk away. This could be a thousand years ago, another grandmother sitting near the water’s edge.
I’m reminded how fully alive each person is in each era in every part of the world. A prehistoric teenaged boy proudly shared his first big kill with his tribe, strutting just a little as he went to sit by the fire with a full belly. A pregnant Norte Chico woman leaned back gratefully to let others braid her hair in what we now call Peru. Old men gossiped about their neighbors as they relaxed near a fountain in ancient Beijing. A Berber trader worried his load of goods might fetch less than the expected price when he reached the marketplace. A little Victorian-era girl gleefully tattled on her brother for cursing.
It seems strange that we don’t see our lives as an unbroken continuum with everyone who ever lived or will live. It seems impossible we aren’t fully aware that the person behind us in line at the store or the person continents away knows same thirst and same hunger we do; feels the same emotions as we do; wants to have a life of meaning as we do. Well into a future I hope is a kind and healthy one, people will surely be sitting in this same spot savoring a summer day.
Right now sunlight glints off the water. A line of ducks passes in a perfect procession. When the kids come to towel off I tell them I’m thinking this scene could be from any era — just happy people playing as people like to do. I am brought back from my musings by a child. This one points to the teenagers who just arrived and says, “It couldn’t be any moment in history, Nana, because they brought Super Soakers.”
Laura Grace Weldon 
Laura, I love this. It reminds me of walking up the river near my house along a rocky path smoothed out by millennia of walkers. Archaeological finds on my friend’s land reveal that the Romans were here. There’s a Bronze Age burial site on the other side of the river. And we know that Neolithic and Neanderthal peoples were in this area. To think that I am walking this same path, the ground beneath smoothed by untold generations of feet – humans and their companion animals – never ceases to amaze me and fill me with a profound sense of connection. My kids like to pull me out of my reveries with their smart-ass comments, of the super soaker variety, too. I’d like to imagine that those kids walking my path or on your beach millennia ago were just as smart-ass. Maybe that’s the real thread that connects us! xx
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We are kindred spirits in our musings Martina. May smart ass kids always be around to keep us thinking!
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Laura, I always appreciate whatever you share, yet have some difficulties logging into wordpress or facebook. So, just for the record thanks for giving us this perspective on time, eternity, and love. We need this right now in our own historical moment. Marijo
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Thanks Marijo.
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As your Nana-on-the-beach reflections remind us, humans have always played in nature, enjoyed its fruits, and tried to capture its energy. We have gone from the energy of a seed in a flower to the energy of an atom in a bomb and from a wave on the ocean to a capsule of water in a super soaker. New contrivances for ancient energies. The sweeping perspective of age allows us to see into time. Like Newton under the apple tree, Nana-on-the-beach discovers the invisible force of timelessness. I love this piece!
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I love the way you put this, “New contrivances for ancient energies.”
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Dear Laura, thank you for your thoughts on thinking about yesterday’s people in the area where you are sitting. I often do the same thing when going for a walk in particular areas or when on vacation in a certain parts of the world. It is so special to think of and include others you don’t even know in that way. All mankind is sacred and special. Thank you for all your writings I always enjoy them.
Warm regards,
Linda Huber
Regina, Sask. Canada
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I’m glad to know you do this too. Some places almost seem to resonate with echoes of the past don’t they?
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When I stand on the beach and look at the thousand-mile view, and take a deep breath, I like to think that in many other places, someone is doing the same, is having their spirit refreshed by the hush of waves on sand, the ozone in the air, and the sense that we are all part of this enormous organism that is our planet. I’m not a nana, but I cherish the unbroken chain of people who walked and still walk there.
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There’s a word for this, sort of. John Koenig, who wrote The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, gives us the word “sonder.” It means the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own.
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My little Crittie has a supersoaker and gleefully soaks everyone around him before cannon-balling off the side of his mother’s pool to soak all those who thought they were safe. Must be a male thing. I wish they’d stay with water and not move onto the weapons of grown-up boys playing war in the streets and vengeannce in the classroom, boys desperately initiating themselves because elders are too busy being busy to celebrate sacred masculinity. I guess this pattern also passes down through the ages and up through the tomorrows. I hold Crittie close. I will not let him get lost.
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I wish all little boys had people close to them as wise and tender as you are, my friend.
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She does have a point but I often muse over the same thoughts, thank you for giving voice to them.
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Clever kids with smart ass answers are what make the world go round!
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Your thoughts remind me of Richard McGuire’s graphic novel, Here and Andri Snær Magnason’s On Time and Water (both incredible books about how time flows!) It is good to frequently remind ourselves of the thread of time that flows through all of us (and connects us in incredible ways!) And right now, those connections really matter! Thank you for sharing your beautiful day at the beach!
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Both of those titles are new to me, I’ll be checking them out. Thank you Kat!
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