Away We Go: Standing By

We’re barefoot with jackets on. It’s the Pacific and this is the way beaches roll. Windy, chilly, sunny all at once. It’s noon on a Tuesday in a state park down a staircase across some dunes. Not especially accessible; you have to want to be here. My favorite kind of place. For a minute it all feels like mine.

We have been on and off conference calls and email this morning, having transported the office to here. We are so lucky. It is also not always easy. The boys are creating with sand, bringing water up from the ocean in all the containers they can find. They build dams then break them down and watch all the ways water interacts with earth.

I head to the parking lot to retrieve something from the car making my way through the deep, calf-burning kind of beach. About halfway up I see a group of people burst from behind the dunes and run full-tilt towards the water. The girls are in bare feet and long dresses with white caps over their heads. The boys are in jeans with suspenders and hats that I recognize from pictures I’ve seen of communities in Pennsylvania.

They don’t even hesitate when they get to the water’s edge. Clothes and all they splash in knee-deep. I see their faces and it’s a rare kind of joy. They are laughing. They are whooping. They are splashing each other. They are smiling. They are wet and don’t care. They are sandy and don’t mind.

They are also Amish, I realize. A group not typically associated with these kinds of feelings and demonstrations. I am so happy for them but also have a gut clench. Are they supposed to be this happy? Aren’t they supposed to be quiet, reserved, and careful? What’s going to happen if they aren’t what they are supposed to be?

I ask myself these questions as if I have any foundation to judge an entire group without knowing anything about them (individually or as a culture). It occurs to me far too late how arrogant this is.

More people from their group arrive and it’s now a gathering of fifty or so. There are adults that are supervising and laying out food. Soccer and volleyballs appear after awhile. The young ones have formed a circle and are passing them back and forth, digging for it when it goes low and playing with abandon, not dissimilar to the way my boys do.

They are so happy. It seems wrong. What’s the matter with me that I’m upset that someone else is demonstrably, unequivocally joyous? It’s because I want a piece of it. I’m jealous. I’m also fearful. Why am I scared in the face of someone I will never see again and have no vested interest in feeling any way?

It’s because I want that too. There are so many chances I’ve had to be like this but have looked them in the eye and said no. I’d rather stay here. Scroll on my phone. Plan next week’s meals. Worry about the upcoming meltdown, whenever it may be. Missed my chance.

I’m jealous and I regret all the times I could have been like them but still can’t bring myself to mirror what’s going on and run into the waves myself, clothes and all. I smile even though I don’t feel like it. I’m trying to take the advice of the yoga teachers and running coaches that say to smile when it’s hard. That the curve of your lips upward start the process of convincing your brain that you can do it. Turns out they are right sometimes.

I may have missed a lot of chances at joy, but today I get to be a bystander. A little rubs off on me by proxy.

As we cross the dunes with our chairs, towels, computers, and other beach accoutrements later on, I hear the group erupt in the sound that usually means someone’s made a unexpected save of the ball. My smile gets a little wider.

Good for them. And, it turns out, good for me too.

Inspired by an experience at Sunset State Beach, Watsonville, California.