If I Leave Here Tomorrow

Since living a good portion of my life down by the ocean now, I notice things which might have just passed me by in the past.  My world has expanded to include things such as tidal patterns, wave heights and seabirds.  Especially seabirds.  I watch as they return each year.  These giant, graceful angels of the sky weighing as much as eight pounds with wingspans of over seven feet.  I watch as they quietly make their way past my window, silently taking count of their flock sizes and then reporting back to my husband when we speak on the phone each afternoon.  On the day that I took these photos, there were more than sixty.  In groupings of two and seven and twelve, they drifted by majestically on the balmy breezes flapping their wings only occasionally, but mostly, floating.

They floated, and I thought to myself that that must be how angels move, demanding very little effort, yet with such a purposeful presence which only something of that magnitude and importance can truly behold.  And the sky was cerulean blue surrounding them with the most beautiful backdrop on which to come home.  I wonder.  What was the space in my mind which is now reserved for seabirds, something that was so totally off of my own radar, what was it filled with before?  In the clearing, what cobwebs resided there before I could see them? Count them?  Notice them?

And the angels, of which I have not yet concretely had the pleasure of seeing before, what is standing in their spot at this particular point in my life?  Knowing that I feel them, like the seabirds who were always there but not within my own personal realm,  I accept their presence yet even squinting my hardest, it is difficult for me to imagine what they might look like.

Yet then, I suddenly have a moment of recall.  Brave, little Jack at my beach house making me promise that he could come back again next year because he loved it there so much.  And I remembered that not all angels fly or float or soar.  Sometimes if we are very, very lucky, they appear into our lives without our even noticing who they are.  Suddenly, we are counting their numbers and recognizing their faces, looking into their eyes and kissing their cheeks.  Sometimes, their lives breeze by ours without our even knowing how it might have happened.  And almost effortlessly, like a seabird floating along on a breeze, we are forever welcoming them home.  Because where we are now, we can never possibly be in the future without forever searching for them, praying for them, recognizing them, without ever again, forgetting to welcome them home.