I try to be a calming effect around my home, passive when alarm arises.
However, the sometimes uncertain universe of freelance writing affects me. Income slow in arriving, work pitches not accepted, bills lurking, "screaming" to be paid, and food needed to "fill the fridge" changes my demeanor. So, when arid times arrive, perhaps I get testy and don't always respond to even the simplest concern or question in an appropriate manner. My daughter Stefanie recently educated me. A few Wednesdays back, she walked the shoreline of Sandy Hook in Highlands, New Jersey with her flip phone in hand. During her stroll, she dropped the phone into a crashing wave, saltwater and sand swamping the tiny box. She was able to retrieve it; luckily it stayed near her feet as the waves receded. When she returned to our selected beach spot, she said, "Well, this was fun. A little bad news, though: I dropped my phone in the water. Now it won't turn on." She said it at the time minus alarm, and I was proud of her for that, for I think she, my wife Lucille, and I knew that the phone was, maybe, now rendered useless. To give you an idea how old the phone is, I gave it as an 18th birthday gift to her in the pre-smartphone days. She had it for her high school graduation, throughout college, college graduation, and the initial years of her young adult life until age 26. Needless to say, she grew attached over the years. The phone, in fact, is older than my current flip phone, which I bought...when? So, the phone meant much to her sentimentally, and she gradually started to feel pain, especially when told by the phone supplier that she would never be able to use it again and anything that was on the phone -- contacts, messages, pictures -- was lost. I countered her dismay. "Look at the bright side," I said. "At least you were able to get to the phone. You still have it. Can you imagine if the wave had pulled it out to sea? Not only is it possible that you may not see it again (unless another wave or waves sent it flowing back), but you would also be concerned that someone who found it would have access to everything on that phone." She agreed, and the next weekend we went and purchased a smartphone, and she, as a fellow freelance writer, now sees the positives, declaring that the "drop" was maybe meant to happen, thus forcing her to finally make the (arguably much needed) transition. She has upgraded to a tool that is now benefitting both her and her writing business. And so, I want to do now what my good friend, First Service Residential President Michael Mendillo, often recommends: circle back. Stefanie had made a positive out of a negative. How about me? Our family again trekked down to Sandy Hook, and I decided this time not to embark on my norm nature walk, but instead to take an inspirational book with me and sit and read and concentrate on the words, ensuring they meet the atmosphere and the atmosphere the words. Which book would do the deed? I selected Anne Morrow Lindbergh's A Gift From the Sea, a book that I had a few times begun but never finished. A few days earlier, when Stefanie and I visited Montclair State University's Sprague Library, we met a woman on campus who was walking her two dogs. When I told her I was on my way to check out A Gift From the Sea, she said, "That book has spoken to me many times. It still does." "Spoken to me." The book probably means different things to different people, and I sensed early in reading it that, as Ms. Lindbergh had selected certain shells and detailed how the shells were shaped and applied to her life, I -- on the bayside of Sandy Hook -- could do the same with fiddler crabs inching along on the wet sand, dune grass growing wild, and the lone woodpecker and two Eastern Goldfinches that flew by and landed near me. I, mesmerized by the author's honesty and down-to-earthiness, took time to place down the book and, not pray really, but talk to God about my life; my concerns and worries, the good things that are happening (and there are), and the application of the nearby nature to my current issues. I looked at the woodpecker, spinning itself in the sand, and one of the goldfinches hopping from branch to branch on a tiny tree. "God, if you so care for them, how much more will you care for me...us?" Following my words, I sat in silence. The concerns never left me, but the stress of late were cast into the Jersey Shore wind. Steve
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Steve Sears is a New Jersey based freelance writer
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