“In certain cases, the difference between the bird on the wing and the bird at rest is so great that one might be watching two different creatures. Not only do colors and new arrangements of colors appear in flight, there is also a revelation of personality…Watch birds flying.”
—Henry Beston, The Outermost House
Early one mid-May morning, my husband and I quietly left the still-sleeping campground to walk along the Gulf of Mexico at Saint Joseph Peninsula State Park in Florida’s Forgotten Coast. The sand felt cool and slightly damp to our feet as we stepped onto the beach. Dew was still on the grasses by the boardwalk. The sun was just up, and the sky was painted pale gray. Soft waves sloshed.
Silently foraging, two willets walked side by side and their tracks appeared in the wet sand. Willets mate for life and return to the same site year after year to lay eggs and raise young. These two looked like a mated pair.
As we walked, suddenly, the willets took off in flight, and their wings showed their bold black-and-white pattern—something we did not see before. Flying synchronously, they looked strong and free as they flew higher over the ocean.
My mate and I walk together, but who are we? Thirty-two years together and about to become grandparents— are we growing individually and together or has the day-to-day led to complacency? Where have we been and where are we going?
When we first married, I worried about giving up my personal freedom. Would I maintain a sense of who I am when I became part of a pair?
Now that I have lived longer and we have been through so much together: parents’ deaths, childrens’ births, house moves, job changes, illnesses, surgeries, friends and extended family coming and going, economic booms and busts, teenagers, and caring for aging relatives, I think about other things. As Beston wrote, “The sea has many voices.” Our relationship has had many voices ranging from whispered prayers of thanks to inward screams of frustration. We have survived.
This survival has meant more that surviving each other; it is the moving through the daily grind and the seasons of life together. Now, it is more important to me to be known than to be free. To talk about someone or some event from the past and know that my husband was there, that is something. Commitment always involves relinquishing a portion of one’s own desires for the good of the bond, but this does not come easy. In this season of my life, the difference is the focus—now I see that my partner gave up his personal freedom for me. I did not see that when I was younger.
I see bird and human footprints in the sand that will wash away in a few hours. Next year, new birds and new humans will walk on the beach together. In eternity, neither lasts, but for now, it is good to be together. Even better, is to be glad to be together.
©Rita Venable 2013