sand and foam
I found La Virgen
made of sand
and coursing tears
never ceasing
outpouring love
her robes
flow to the sea
Last of the beaches. Tomorrow I will come to the fork in the road – Norte or Primitivo. The Primitivo cuts cross-country, inland, through the mountains. It is the oldest stretch of the Camino, and daunting, from the stories I have been hearing. A test of endurance.
I hadn’t realized I would feel heartbroken, leaving the sea. In the morning, I stepped onto my first beach under heavy skies, meandering between the grassy dunes and surf. I found sea glass and a piece of shell. And then, wandering toward the far end of the beach, I came upon a miracle.
How shall my heart be unsealed unless it be broken?
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
There she was. My Own Virgen. She Who Hears…Me. Alone on an empty beach, my eyes could not look away from this apparition of the Goddess of Mercy made of the sand and sea. Water bubbled up from unseen creatures or unseen pools, rising through the sand, creating a halo of flowing hair and robes like a current of love bringing Her to life in front of me. I felt my heart rise as well, singing a song I could not yet hear, breaking open like a wild wave over dark, volcanic rocks.
We choose our joys and our sorrows long before we experience them.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
I had no scientific explanation for the coincidental alignment of all the bubbles and all the tiny rivulets creating this work of living art. Synchronicity, that I was the one who came upon such a sand painting as it was happening, finding meaning in the random. Sitting on a rock near Her, flowing with the long, slow tides rolling before me, I wrote poetry, in gratitude.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A beachside cafe opened, so I had coffee in bare feet. Brushing the sand off, boots on, I hiked to the next beach. This time, I swam, in big, strong waves like galloping horses, waves to take seriously. I watched new surfers learning the read these waves, skinny young high school kids nervous to go too far from shore.
A big red-bearded man appeared. Striding across the beach in his wetsuit with the relaxed, confident manner of experience, he and his board entered the water without a sound or a ripple. I watched him paddle out beyond the youngsters, then in one easy motion, stand up and surf effortlessly, gracefully, back in over the roaring waves.
Great beauty captures me, but a beauty still greater frees me even from itself.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
He reminded me of my oldest son, Zachariah, a big red-bearded man of the mountains. Yet Zach moved with the same relaxed confidence, graceful and athletic. I smiled at the bearded surfer from far across the beach.
Everywhere I had walked in Spain, I had seen little ones with blond curls, memories of little Zach drifting after them down sidewalks and beach promenades. My first child; how to explain to your first child what they mean to you, how they changed you just by their appearance in the world.
It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life. Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
Zach was born mellow. A spiritual seeker by nature, he became a deep thinker by habit, not content to only understand why things worked the way they did in life, but always asking why they couldn’t work differently. Better.
It’s not easy being soulful in a binary world of right/wrong answers. Impatient with ordinary limitations, Zach pushed himself to grow, often in unorthodox ways, always searching for meaning. It was here that our paths aligned, and collided.
The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
I was such a young mother. Pregnant at 19, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t listen well to what he was trying to tell me. I didn’t know to let Zach lead his own path of discovery, and just come along with him to avert disaster. Disaster was the only path I knew. So I blocked him at
every turn.
Zach wasn’t going to fight about it – not about anything. But he wasn’t going to take the status quo for an answer about anything, either. It wasn’t that he was belligerent: he was just not wired for mindless conformity. He simply refused to stop questioning perceived limits.
I later found out the term for this behavior: experiential learning. Experiential learners make great experimental theorists, eager to test their hypotheses by testing themselves. They hurl themselves against arbitrary boundaries and sail over the edge of the known world, bound for discovery. These are the brilliant fools for understanding who rush in where angels fear to tread. Explorers.
A traveler am I and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region within my soul.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
All along the Camino, I found Zach exploring paths in front of me. His energy was my energy, but better – less burdened, lighter, more free. Where I had to break the wave of my heart upon the rocks, Zach was the experienced surfer, gliding over these troubled waters, fearless to be tested. Showing teenage me how it’s done.
For 30 years, I had forgotten to thank him. For the surfing lessons. For appearing in the world. To Me.
When I was pregnant with Zach, I studied books about the progress of his development, noting week by week what new milestone he had reached – fully formed spinal cord, heartbeat, fingers and toes. I read about the process of labor and delivery, stages, centimeters of dilation, the thinning of effacement, how the baby moves down and heads out into the world on his own.
Yet, when the time came, it was not in stages – it was all in waves. My water broke in a steady stream, and as we left for the hospital, this inland sea continued to flood. As the contractions became stronger and steadier, I found the best way to manage them was to ride them – I surfed over the crests of the contractions. Sometimes, I was inside the wave, bent low but somehow still on my feet, seeing all the world a watery turquoise of filtered light. I surfed those waves until we both made it to shore, drenched and totally alive.
As I watched his bearded double smoothly cruise all the way in to the beach, I heard the tune of the first song I would write on the Camino. The first of many.
When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
Brushing the sand off, boots on, I hiked to the next beach. Listening. Humming.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Heard El Bufones before I had fully come upon them. Here, waves break inside cracks and caves in the cliffs. The sound is incredible: low, like a great drum, like the waves are breaking within a mountain cirque under black storm clouds and you are inside it as well, within the sound.
I was actually standing above, overtop the crevices, listening to the earth and sea make this deep music. But it doesn’t matter where you stand – it pulls you, like gravity; the world contracts around you, close and listening. At high tides, the cliffs will spout water like whales, the earth breathing as it swims through its oceans.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
At the last beach, the waves were almost nonexistent, just rising and falling water. Mellow. Nothing to body surf, nothing to worry about. Cooled from the hot sun, rinsed off and relaxed,
I got to lay on the beach one last time, watching all the people walking, wading, playing beach badminton; hearing calls for children to come eat, the triumph and glee of missed racquet hits, the seagulls crying and turning along the shore. Finally, I just lay looking at the clouds changing overhead.
I am forever walking upon these shores, betwixt the sand and the foam.
— Kahlil Gibran, “Sand and Foam”
I learned the differences in waves today. The trepidation I felt about the Primitivo had become a readiness to rise above. My poem, about the shell I found on the beach of the miracle, became the song I was hearing. Hearing, and being heard, the song no longer silent.
that water will make foam
still a mystery to me
the placement of these pebbles
on the sand
so ordered and so free
how each one shines
from where it’s been
beneath the waves unending