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“I don’t think I would be a landscaper if that’s what it took. I am...getting soft in my old age.”
She smiled but was quiet for a bit. It was hard to believe that her youth was behind her. That they really were looking at not their twilight years necessarily, but late afternoon. She didn’t want to think that the child-rearing time of her life was over. Or that her body was getting old and hurting and breaking down. That she couldn’t do the things she used to.
Maybe all those things were true, but she wanted to look ahead with hope and positive feelings. Like, maybe she couldn’t do the things that she used to do, but she could do things now that she didn’t used to be able to.
Like quitting her job and buying an inn. Like getting married to her best friend. Like having an empty nest and going to bed at three o’clock in the morning and getting up at one in the afternoon if she felt like it.
She wanted to look forward to the things that she could do and not bemoan the things that she couldn’t.
But she wanted to enjoy her memories as well.
“You know, I still feel like a little girl inside, but I know I’m getting older. I want to look forward to the rest of my life but be able to enjoy looking back as well. Is that too much to ask?”
“I think it’s quite possible. I mean, weren’t we just doing that? Remembering the bonfires on the beach, the laughter we shared around them. Remembering weekdays, and the days right before school started when the beach was deserted, because the tourists had all gone home. But even when there were a ton of people on the beach, we had a good time.”
“Some nights, total strangers would show up and just sit down with us.”
“I know. It was kind of fun. The girls made some friends that way.”
“I actually think one of my daughters went to college with one of the girls that she’d met on the beach. They were roommates.”
“Exactly. Where else can you do that but in Strawberry Sands, right?”
“Yeah. And those are the great memories that I want to hold onto. But I guess I’m impatient to get the rest of my life started too.”
“Impatient?”
“Well, maybe that’s not the right word. I just think I’m getting older. I want to rush and make sure to do all things. You know?”
“Is that why you quit your job?”
“No. There is no underlying reason, other than the one that I told you about. Just a new administration, and all that, but yeah. I don’t want to be in limbo. I don’t want to wonder what’s going to happen with my empty nest, or my job, or anything. I wanted it all to resolve right now.”
He laughed. “But that’s life, isn’t it? It doesn’t resolve. Or if that resolves, something else comes up. There’s always something that we’re dealing with, and I think God does that for a reason.”
“I think sometimes we get it all at once too.”
“It does seem like you have had a lot of changes at once. And I can see how you’re in a big rush to get everything settled so that you have a predictable routine. But I suppose that’s where patience comes in. Just being content where you’re at right now, even if the place that you’re at isn’t a very stable spot.”
“You and God are the only stable things in my life right now.”
“The lake is still here.” His words were low, soft, but they had a note of pleasure in them that made her think that he liked being lumped in with the Lord as being a stable part of her life.
“Yeah. And the town. It’s changing, but not at a speed that I can’t keep up with.”
“And you can keep up with this. We can. Together. We’ll just hang out together, be patient, and let God move and work.”
“But we still can work ourselves.” She wanted to remind him of that. Wanted to make sure that they understood that it was okay to work for things. But patience was usually the name of the game. She’d already made phone calls, now she just had to wait to meet with the people she needed to meet with. And to get started. And then to try to raise money. She had to be patient. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to raise it all, she didn’t know the end, couldn’t see it, just had to wait for God to work things out.
“You know, we can always look around for the lessons that we’re supposed to be learning at whatever stage of life we’re in. I think sometimes we overlook that. We’re so busy working on trying to get our lives together, trying to get things to work out the way we want them to, that we don’t stop to think that maybe God is trying to teach us something right now.”
“All right. What do you think God is trying to teach you right now?” she asked, turning the tables on him a bit, because he had been talking about her.
“Oh. That’s a good question.”
The horses’ hooves made a muted clump on the sand, and it felt like they were the only ones in the world as the waves crashed rhythmically against the shore and the breeze blew over them.
It took so long to answer that she started thinking about the things she wanted to accomplish the next day and had almost forgotten that they were even in a conversation.
