BE

“What do you do all day?” The question comes from an older female paddleboarder while I’m on deck readying the kayak for an excusion to the swimming hole. The question irritates me, just as when a marina-mate asked it in Mazatlán.

“I’m a writer,” I reply, tying Audrey’s line to the blue halyard so I can winch her up, over the railing, and down into the sea. I could just as easily say I’m a worrier, a launderer, a cleaner, a fixer, a dancer, a provisioner, a painter, a hull scraper, a surfer, a problem solver, a swimmer, a singer, a capitana.

“Oh, you write,” says the woman. She then asks where I’m from “originally.”

“God,” I reply.

I ponder this exchange as I paddle west a few miles. Do do do – my life has been a long list of chores I check off or worry about. Why can’t I just BE? Why do I have to do? And can I be while doing? 

Sunday I walked into town along the shore, many many miles. When the hurry-scurries overwhelmed me, I injured a toe, which is now purple. Pay attention to your life. This is it. It is happening. Stopped. Sat under a tree on cool concrete. “The mountains are out,” we used to say on a clear day when I was a kid, and they are out here, now. Extraordinary. That there is such beauty all around and we don’t acknowledge it or celebrate it. “Half of the time we’re gone and we don’t know where, we don’t know where,” sing Simon and Garfunkel.

Over and over I (patiently, compassionately) catch myself, and say I am here, now. Mindfulness. But really, it is Embodiment. It is Listening. It is Sensing. I am scrubbing the deck, which shelters me from the weather. I am washing the pretty, patterned blue plate I bought in California. 

I come from a long line of worrying, hurrying parents. Come to find out that this is a habit I am happier without. Maybe it’s an age thing, slowing down and smelling the flowers. Appreciating. But it’s also slowing down to listen to all the emotions, new or submerged — including Pain, Rage, Terror, Grief — instead of hurry-scurrying past them. Accepting reality, instead of distracting myself. My toe really hurts. I am here, now.

Back onboard Habibi, a hummingbird flies through the cockpit, hovers at the starboard railing, then zips away. I am blooming.