What a Miracle is Life!
~N.B. below is a journal entry I made this morning and found it an encouragement to myself. I publish it here in hopes that it may be of encouragement to others.
Wednesday evening was another hazy, hot and humid one in Quincy and David texted his mom on the way home from work. “How about we go out for dinner tonight?” We did that. And instead of the usual fare at Asian Fusion we trekked on down to Hough’s Neck to “Off the Hook” a favorite spot of Aunty Peg’s and increasingly of our own.
Cindy had been hankering for a hamburger, David selected the blackened scallops on risotto and I had been on a quest for a decent feed of baked haddock for the longest time.
This common neighborhood restaurant of “Neckers” outdid itself. Each of our dishes came out to perfection and with quiet ease we feasted at our luxuriant leisure relishing not just the food but each other’s company, telling stories, lamenting the state of the country and That Man’s inhumanity to humankind, and remembering and celebrating the kindliness of our friends and family.
We eagerly spoke of plans for our Christmas trip to New Orleans. Cindy and I expressed eagerness at our upcoming journey to Sacramento when Michael and I will celebrate our birthdays; his 40th and my 80th! The fact that Michael will be the same age I was when he was born tickles me to no end and I plan on telling him so when the time comes.
Then with dinner concluded David said; “Have you been down to Nut Island?” I certainly haven’t and Cindy hesitated to answer as if to say “Surely I must have, but I can’t say that I remember just now.”
What unfolded then for us was a newness impossible to expect or prepare for. As we drove by some impressive homes we progressed further out Quincy Bay toward Boston Harbor into a land neither Cindy nor I had ever seen before. There we were greeted by a setting sun of indescribable beauty.
The clouds that formed the backdrop for the waning glimpses of daylight were breathtakingly beautiful. They were not quite stratus clouds but they layered themselves across the sky. They weren’t precisely cumulus but there were lovely and gracious puffs of themselves scattered about. They weren’t exactly cirrus but they played across the skies in swirls of frolicsome delight.
We found a place to park and walked out to the edges of the grass and found a suitable spot to snap a few photographs. No image captured even by the finest camera could do justice to what we saw that evening. David snapped a selfie of the three of us
The evening tickled me with happiness.
On the way back to the car we passed by an immigrant family~my guess would be of Middle Eastern origin. They had spread a blanket out across the ground and had feasted on a simple family picnic and luxuriated now in the pleasantness of the cooling evening breezes of the bay.
There was a little boy there and I looked at him and his dad and exclaimed; “I remember when my son was that age”~pointing to David.
And then it was as if by way of Revelation the words were given to me, and I said;
“What a miracle is life!”
