Friday, July 27, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Turtle Mama
I've been holding off telling you about the turtles because anytime you start a story with, "So we spend all summer at the beach and get to help the turtle hatchlings to the water" people stop liking you. BUT I'm trying to give you something here, so just read it and come see it for yourself sometime.
We relocate in the summer to Bald Head Island in North Carolina. When Olivia was 5, I happened into the Turtle Central, the Conservancy Store and noticed a small sign announcing a need for Turtle Monitors. Since "Monitor" implies nothing other than watching I figured I was well qualified. Keep in mind, I'd never even seen a mama Loggerhead turtle, much less a hatchling, but Olivia and I attended the recruitment meeting anyway. Everyone else in the meeting already had an official monitor shirt and all but one of them ignored me. This sort of treatment only makes me want to elbow my way in so I signed us up. I clung to that one friendly face like a life raft for the first turtle season. Janie taught me the ropes and turned into the dearest of friends.
Turns out MONITOR means more to the conservation efforts in the state of North Carolina than just watching. By the end of May, mama Loggerheads trudge up the beach and laboriously dig to lay and cover their eggs. When they slog back into the water it's with a permanent goodbye to their hatchlings. Their declining population has put them on the endangered species lists and places like Bald Head and other coastal areas establish monitoring programs to increase the odds that hatchlings can even make it into water since only 1 in 10,000 will actually make it to sexual maturity (25-30 years old). They've been doing it for millions of years, so it's hard to believe they need our help, but just a vigilant human presence or a cage over a nest can keep a fox from digging or a bird at bay long enough for them to scamper into the water.
I didn't know when I signed up that summer that I would become part of a cultish, betting community. The incubation is +/-60 days, but the biggest part of our participation comes in those last 2 weeks. Turtles hatch at night and we dig a runway of sorts (and thankfully we discovered garden edging because re-digging the trench every evening will make a girl want to quit) so that they have a straight path to the beach. Then we mostly sit and watch. Sunset is always worth it. The conversation among absolute strangers in the dark on the beach always turns into an interesting one and I love knowing that all of the confessions and worries that are shared there stay there even if maybe it's because none of us recognize each other in the daylight at the pool. There are lots of monitor children so for the last 7 years, Olivia and her friends have played flashlight tag, danced, dazzled each other with glowing plankton and then finally nestled into sand to watch and wait. We sometimes leave when the wind or storm seems like too much and there's no sign, but the gambler in most monitors will make us wait just a little longer, just in case. So sometimes we return home at 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning covered in sand and exhausted. Getting sand out of ears at 2am is no easy task.
When the bowl-like depression finally gives us some evidence of movement way down deep, our watch intensifies. Visitors stop by with questions some of which are answerable (about how many eggs?) and some that are not (about how much longer?). The best part is how many faces, young and old, sit in wonder, breath held, waiting, waiting, waiting, with other strangers who have at least this one thing in common. It can take hours, and maybe days even, and some folks resign. What they hope to see is called a "boiling" - when the average 120 or so little palm-sized hatchlings clamor over one another and poke a little head and flipper above sand before starting what is sometimes a sudden, long, tumbling towards water. All lights off for visitors and one big moon (or sometimes a Maglight) for them to follow. There's lots of shushing and "Did you see's?" and maybe a falsetto version of the Barney song or Jingle Bells if Janie's daughter Megan is there and determined to serenade them.
I swear when the babies hear the water better they speed up and rush towards it. No human feet follow into the water, rarely a human hand allowed to flip them over if they are stuck on the way, and only instinct to get them there. I wonder if they know we are praying, that so many of us are hovering over them like angels for this small part of their journey. I wonder if they know their odds of survival and I hope that they don't. The water scoops them up and takes them out and sometimes right back. They try again and again until they slip out of sight in the black water.
And then there are lots of words like miracle and beautiful and the gathering up of towels and chairs and children and a mass exodus of sleepy, but too happy to sleep people, off the beach. No flash photography means they will only leave with a memory. They are witnesses to nature, which I guess you could call miraculous, but it's hardly rare and is right there in front of each of us every day. What's changed is their noticing of it and their gratitude for it. I don't mind the sand in my teeth and hair and ears at this point. Now I can breathe.
Most monitors let the beach clear and sit and wait a while longer. I use the time to thank God for the quiet, for the moon, for noticing every little creature and usually, because I've been at it for a while, to wait for a few last stragglers who are still under the sand struggling harder than their brothers or sisters, and who need the protection just as much. Sometimes it's only one, but we wouldn't make him walk it alone. Quietly we will follow along the runway in the moonshine, me praying, Olivia encouraging, him using his flippers like little wings until he feels the weightlessness of water and is carried off on wave after wave into the dark.
We relocate in the summer to Bald Head Island in North Carolina. When Olivia was 5, I happened into the Turtle Central, the Conservancy Store and noticed a small sign announcing a need for Turtle Monitors. Since "Monitor" implies nothing other than watching I figured I was well qualified. Keep in mind, I'd never even seen a mama Loggerhead turtle, much less a hatchling, but Olivia and I attended the recruitment meeting anyway. Everyone else in the meeting already had an official monitor shirt and all but one of them ignored me. This sort of treatment only makes me want to elbow my way in so I signed us up. I clung to that one friendly face like a life raft for the first turtle season. Janie taught me the ropes and turned into the dearest of friends.
Turns out MONITOR means more to the conservation efforts in the state of North Carolina than just watching. By the end of May, mama Loggerheads trudge up the beach and laboriously dig to lay and cover their eggs. When they slog back into the water it's with a permanent goodbye to their hatchlings. Their declining population has put them on the endangered species lists and places like Bald Head and other coastal areas establish monitoring programs to increase the odds that hatchlings can even make it into water since only 1 in 10,000 will actually make it to sexual maturity (25-30 years old). They've been doing it for millions of years, so it's hard to believe they need our help, but just a vigilant human presence or a cage over a nest can keep a fox from digging or a bird at bay long enough for them to scamper into the water.
I didn't know when I signed up that summer that I would become part of a cultish, betting community. The incubation is +/-60 days, but the biggest part of our participation comes in those last 2 weeks. Turtles hatch at night and we dig a runway of sorts (and thankfully we discovered garden edging because re-digging the trench every evening will make a girl want to quit) so that they have a straight path to the beach. Then we mostly sit and watch. Sunset is always worth it. The conversation among absolute strangers in the dark on the beach always turns into an interesting one and I love knowing that all of the confessions and worries that are shared there stay there even if maybe it's because none of us recognize each other in the daylight at the pool. There are lots of monitor children so for the last 7 years, Olivia and her friends have played flashlight tag, danced, dazzled each other with glowing plankton and then finally nestled into sand to watch and wait. We sometimes leave when the wind or storm seems like too much and there's no sign, but the gambler in most monitors will make us wait just a little longer, just in case. So sometimes we return home at 1 or 2 or 3 in the morning covered in sand and exhausted. Getting sand out of ears at 2am is no easy task.
When the bowl-like depression finally gives us some evidence of movement way down deep, our watch intensifies. Visitors stop by with questions some of which are answerable (about how many eggs?) and some that are not (about how much longer?). The best part is how many faces, young and old, sit in wonder, breath held, waiting, waiting, waiting, with other strangers who have at least this one thing in common. It can take hours, and maybe days even, and some folks resign. What they hope to see is called a "boiling" - when the average 120 or so little palm-sized hatchlings clamor over one another and poke a little head and flipper above sand before starting what is sometimes a sudden, long, tumbling towards water. All lights off for visitors and one big moon (or sometimes a Maglight) for them to follow. There's lots of shushing and "Did you see's?" and maybe a falsetto version of the Barney song or Jingle Bells if Janie's daughter Megan is there and determined to serenade them.
I swear when the babies hear the water better they speed up and rush towards it. No human feet follow into the water, rarely a human hand allowed to flip them over if they are stuck on the way, and only instinct to get them there. I wonder if they know we are praying, that so many of us are hovering over them like angels for this small part of their journey. I wonder if they know their odds of survival and I hope that they don't. The water scoops them up and takes them out and sometimes right back. They try again and again until they slip out of sight in the black water.
And then there are lots of words like miracle and beautiful and the gathering up of towels and chairs and children and a mass exodus of sleepy, but too happy to sleep people, off the beach. No flash photography means they will only leave with a memory. They are witnesses to nature, which I guess you could call miraculous, but it's hardly rare and is right there in front of each of us every day. What's changed is their noticing of it and their gratitude for it. I don't mind the sand in my teeth and hair and ears at this point. Now I can breathe.
Most monitors let the beach clear and sit and wait a while longer. I use the time to thank God for the quiet, for the moon, for noticing every little creature and usually, because I've been at it for a while, to wait for a few last stragglers who are still under the sand struggling harder than their brothers or sisters, and who need the protection just as much. Sometimes it's only one, but we wouldn't make him walk it alone. Quietly we will follow along the runway in the moonshine, me praying, Olivia encouraging, him using his flippers like little wings until he feels the weightlessness of water and is carried off on wave after wave into the dark.
 |
| Hatchling heading for water after nest excavation. |
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
I am Pavlov's Dog
I am Pavlov's dog. Except without the bell and the salivating and really without much reward either. Well, there's kind of a bell, if by bell you mean the soft Ping! from my iPhone. I can tell you exactly how I became a slave to this gadget and any other internet available device really. It started with the manly and very enthusiastic voice spouting intermittently, "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!" and because everybody loves mail a little shot of dopamine raced to my brain. It probably took less than a week for me to be hooked. These periodic announcements always meant some REAL and EXCITING piece of information from someone who LOVED me (I mean, we didn't give our email addresses out to just ANYBODY in 1993) was only a dial-up modem eternity away. Boy have I gone downhill and FAST from there. Now I've slid from the manly pronouncement to the sleeker PING! of the iPhone, but the problem is that I practice no prioritization of information coming at me. I mean, I might be receiving a simple "kk" text from Olivia, or maybe a Facebook announcement that someone has posted yet another photo of any number of young ladies making the duckface (please, for the love of GOD stop making the damn duckface, girls), or maybe it's a bill reminder on email, or 100 reminders about LivingSocial opportunities, or maybe my mom really needs me, but I don't know that without checking, do I? So I better check. And often.
Remember how we used to watch the scary robot movies where the technology took over the world? How is this so different? I've just read this article http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/08/is-the-internet-making-us-crazy-what-the-new-research-says.html stating that this new medium called the internet and our use of it has actually REWIRED our brains to suit this pace and lack of prioritization. All of this happened in an effort to keep receiving that jolt of dopamine. We love the PING! because it's a signal that tells us we are not alone, we are connected to our friends (both REAL friends and ones we've not met but that we show our duckfaces to regularly). Hell, we can't even have dinner with family without any number of devices making an appearance or at least discussing what our clever little devices can do. I'd say we're definitely the slaves to robots, friends. Did you know they even treat INTERNET ADDICTION?? Not hard to imagine that given the many glazed eyes I see in both young and old users and I'm guessing this disorder doesn't just apply to pasty-faced gamers with multiple screens and old bags of Taco Bell lying about their lairs.
The stewardess on my flight a few days ago says that every time she does the safety announcements she's performing to a sea of foreheads trying to get their last fix before they have to turn them off for 45 minutes. I felt kinda sorry for her, but I could tell she totally understood their dependence. Her iPhone was in a bedazzled sort of case and she made sure to check it every few seconds. Maybe when the plane starts to plummet someone could Google what we ought to do.
So I don't intend to go crazy and drop the phone in the ocean. I value knowing what my kids are doing when they aren't with me and being available in case there's some sort of emergency. The problem is that my incoming texts and notifications are hardly ever emergencies. More likely it's a stupid duckface notification anyway. That sense of connection I thought this technology brought me actually makes me feel very disconnected especially when you and I are together. I can't focus on YOU with all these Pings. I'm pulled in 100 directions. The robots are winning and I'm exhausted so something has to give. I'm thinking for the next while, in a personal attempt to beat back the machine takeover, you should know that if I don't answer your very important PING immediately, when I do get back to you, I'll be all yours.
Remember how we used to watch the scary robot movies where the technology took over the world? How is this so different? I've just read this article http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/08/is-the-internet-making-us-crazy-what-the-new-research-says.html stating that this new medium called the internet and our use of it has actually REWIRED our brains to suit this pace and lack of prioritization. All of this happened in an effort to keep receiving that jolt of dopamine. We love the PING! because it's a signal that tells us we are not alone, we are connected to our friends (both REAL friends and ones we've not met but that we show our duckfaces to regularly). Hell, we can't even have dinner with family without any number of devices making an appearance or at least discussing what our clever little devices can do. I'd say we're definitely the slaves to robots, friends. Did you know they even treat INTERNET ADDICTION?? Not hard to imagine that given the many glazed eyes I see in both young and old users and I'm guessing this disorder doesn't just apply to pasty-faced gamers with multiple screens and old bags of Taco Bell lying about their lairs.
The stewardess on my flight a few days ago says that every time she does the safety announcements she's performing to a sea of foreheads trying to get their last fix before they have to turn them off for 45 minutes. I felt kinda sorry for her, but I could tell she totally understood their dependence. Her iPhone was in a bedazzled sort of case and she made sure to check it every few seconds. Maybe when the plane starts to plummet someone could Google what we ought to do.
So I don't intend to go crazy and drop the phone in the ocean. I value knowing what my kids are doing when they aren't with me and being available in case there's some sort of emergency. The problem is that my incoming texts and notifications are hardly ever emergencies. More likely it's a stupid duckface notification anyway. That sense of connection I thought this technology brought me actually makes me feel very disconnected especially when you and I are together. I can't focus on YOU with all these Pings. I'm pulled in 100 directions. The robots are winning and I'm exhausted so something has to give. I'm thinking for the next while, in a personal attempt to beat back the machine takeover, you should know that if I don't answer your very important PING immediately, when I do get back to you, I'll be all yours.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Dear Brad
I have heard that writing a letter helps when you are grieving. I decided to try and have discovered that I could just keep writing forever to my friend of over 20 years and I'm not certain it would make me feel better about being without him. Still, I think there's value in articulation so here it is. My hope is that there's some relief in sincerity. If it injures you to read it, don't. If it honors my friend and shines any light on how much I cared for him, then I'm pleased.
Dear Brad,
This wasn't supposed to happen, honey. Your birthday is just next month. You have dogs. Your hair is not all the way gray. You have nieces and nephews and I've done everything the book says you are supposed to do to keep you here so this is not supposed to happen. And also I thought you promised you wouldn't ever leave me.
I'm not ready.
God, I can't bear that you were alone when you left this earth. That's the worst part to me - that for even a minute you felt a separation from those of us who love you so much. And anyway, shouldn't I have known the instant you were gone? You'd think I would have felt the earth move a little when you left me. I keep looking backwards to see if maybe I did and didn't recognize that the tremor was your departure. I don't have much experience with these things.
Remember how you saved me? Remember? God, if it weren't for you I would have kept trailing after so many losers. You believed I was so much better than I ever was and you never could believe I thought the same of you. Remember when I needed you and you drove me several hours to my grandparent's house for the funeral and then you said for me to just call, you'd be back to get me another day? And remember when we grew our hair out together? Yours was huge and mine was flat and we were certain we looked fantastic. Remember after college when you came and whisked me away to a resort in Jamaica because we couldn't bear any more cold weather? Nobody else would have done that. Nobody else would have laughed me through bad haircuts and bad relationships and nobody else read every word of every thing I ever wrote. Nobody else made me laugh like you.
You were never any of the bad things you claimed to be, sweetheart. Sometimes I think you could glimpse what I could see, this shiny, smart, witty, champion, capable and quick to laugh. You were always more loved than you could accept. Your hilarious dissection of your every fault made you all the more precious to your friends. Didn't you know we adored you? Maybe if despair hadn't felt so familiar you could have believed that.
Thank God I have enough memories of us that I can keep you close, that I can hear your voice just as clear as day and that I know exactly what you sounded like when you laughed and when you cried even. I'm so grateful, honey, for every bit of influence your humor and heart have on me, so grateful that my daughter shares your birthday and that you showed up for me every single time I ever asked for you. And I'm sorry, too, that I didn't find the right combination of words that would make you stay here with me a little longer at least, that I didn't keep you closer if that's what it would have taken or that I didn't understand the depth of your despair. I'm still wishing I could somehow bargain you back here by rethinking every conversation.
So now I'm stuck dealing with people on Facebook trying to out-grieve one another and doing the frantic work of collecting every memory I can grab up, every voicemail, every scribbled note as some scrap of evidence that you did really love me and that you knew I really loved you. I'm the crazy woman, left here telling strangers at the market how you were always the funniest, smartest, most insightful one. If you wondered, they don't think our inside jokes are as funny as we did.
I hate this tangly, suffocating, horror of losing you and I hate that the world injured you so badly and so frequently and that you were just too sweet for the ugliness of it and I hate most of all that the person I would call to whine about all of it is you.
I know that grief works this way. I'm smart enough to know that I'll just have to miss you and miss you and miss you until this agony dulls around the edges. I can do that. It's just that it wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Dear Brad,
This wasn't supposed to happen, honey. Your birthday is just next month. You have dogs. Your hair is not all the way gray. You have nieces and nephews and I've done everything the book says you are supposed to do to keep you here so this is not supposed to happen. And also I thought you promised you wouldn't ever leave me.
I'm not ready.
God, I can't bear that you were alone when you left this earth. That's the worst part to me - that for even a minute you felt a separation from those of us who love you so much. And anyway, shouldn't I have known the instant you were gone? You'd think I would have felt the earth move a little when you left me. I keep looking backwards to see if maybe I did and didn't recognize that the tremor was your departure. I don't have much experience with these things.
Remember how you saved me? Remember? God, if it weren't for you I would have kept trailing after so many losers. You believed I was so much better than I ever was and you never could believe I thought the same of you. Remember when I needed you and you drove me several hours to my grandparent's house for the funeral and then you said for me to just call, you'd be back to get me another day? And remember when we grew our hair out together? Yours was huge and mine was flat and we were certain we looked fantastic. Remember after college when you came and whisked me away to a resort in Jamaica because we couldn't bear any more cold weather? Nobody else would have done that. Nobody else would have laughed me through bad haircuts and bad relationships and nobody else read every word of every thing I ever wrote. Nobody else made me laugh like you.
You were never any of the bad things you claimed to be, sweetheart. Sometimes I think you could glimpse what I could see, this shiny, smart, witty, champion, capable and quick to laugh. You were always more loved than you could accept. Your hilarious dissection of your every fault made you all the more precious to your friends. Didn't you know we adored you? Maybe if despair hadn't felt so familiar you could have believed that.
Thank God I have enough memories of us that I can keep you close, that I can hear your voice just as clear as day and that I know exactly what you sounded like when you laughed and when you cried even. I'm so grateful, honey, for every bit of influence your humor and heart have on me, so grateful that my daughter shares your birthday and that you showed up for me every single time I ever asked for you. And I'm sorry, too, that I didn't find the right combination of words that would make you stay here with me a little longer at least, that I didn't keep you closer if that's what it would have taken or that I didn't understand the depth of your despair. I'm still wishing I could somehow bargain you back here by rethinking every conversation.
So now I'm stuck dealing with people on Facebook trying to out-grieve one another and doing the frantic work of collecting every memory I can grab up, every voicemail, every scribbled note as some scrap of evidence that you did really love me and that you knew I really loved you. I'm the crazy woman, left here telling strangers at the market how you were always the funniest, smartest, most insightful one. If you wondered, they don't think our inside jokes are as funny as we did.
I hate this tangly, suffocating, horror of losing you and I hate that the world injured you so badly and so frequently and that you were just too sweet for the ugliness of it and I hate most of all that the person I would call to whine about all of it is you.
I know that grief works this way. I'm smart enough to know that I'll just have to miss you and miss you and miss you until this agony dulls around the edges. I can do that. It's just that it wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Sorry sorry sorry
I was going to apologize for being so busy living that I didn't have time to write about all the living I'm doing and then things happened and now I need to apologize for not writing because I'm swallowed up with grieving my dear friend Brad's death and I promise to write to you as soon as I can breathe and think again. Until then, let's just do pictures or something.
.JPG) |
| Summer 2011 |
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
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