Epiphany

by Sheila Greer

Almost 8 years ago I wanted to visit my daughter who lived at that time in Long Island. One day she drove us out to Long Island Sound where we thought we would take a stroll along the beach. We parked her car and got out making our way to the water’s edge where the foamy waves whispered across the mix of broken shells and tiny pebbles. They crunched beneath our feet as we walked and kept our voices low, not wanting to drown out the sounds of the surf and the cries of the gulls and the crunch crunch of our steps.

The landscape was littered with driftwood, tangled seaweed and the occasional abandoned row boat. To the right of us rose sheer cliffs where balanced large, weathered houses, stoic and silent, framed by stunted trees, their heads bent permanently away from the sea. To our left the sea with the occasional stray boulder providing places for us to rest from time to time as we forged onward, because of my curiosity to see what was just out of my reach in the curved landscape that lay ahead. “Just a bit farther,” I prodded my weary companion when she took longer and longer to get started again each time we stopped. I had to see what might be just around the corner. My obsession with seeing what might be hiding behind that bend was my fuel.

Finally my daughter could go no further. Her hips were giving out again and she was experiencing that limiting pain that she has lived with all her life. I couldn’t insist any longer and I left her there to rest while I moved on down the beach. As I got farther and farther away from her, I was also aware that I didn’t seem to be getting any closer to my goal. What first seemed to be a short walk turned into an endless quest. I looked back at my daughter and she was swallowed up in the mist that was creeping in from the sea. I looked up ahead of me and the sheer walled cliffs bent farther and farther out of my reach. I was alone and wondering why I didn’t just turn back. My company was the sound of the surf, the whispering wind and the softness of my steps as now they fell on sandy soil. And then the voice, quiet and so real I found myself turning my head to look at someone not there. “You think you walk alone, but you are never alone,” it said. “You are searching and you will find what you look for, only on your own, because those you think will be with you can’t keep up. Don’t fret over them and don’t judge because they will find in their own way, walking their own path. And those that have to stop for awhile will be waiting for you. Don’t be upset over them, just love them. And remember this, that you are never alone, I have been with you from the beginning and I will not leave you.”

And then I stopped walking, looked back at the small form in the mist that waited patiently, squinted at the cliffs ahead and noted that the tide had reached their base and was pounding against their feet with impatient fury, and I turned to retrace my steps back to my daughter. When I reached her she smiled and said, “You didn’t go all the way to the bend?” “Nope, didn’t need to.”