Sunrise

"With every rising of the sun,

think of our life as just begun."

- Unknown

I still haven't slept yet tonight.

Without a second thought, I got in my car and I drove. It's extremely rare that I
find myself without babies or someone to be responsible for.
 But tonight I had that small luxury.
And I took advantage of it.

Its hard to sleep when I have a lot on my mind. I can't shut off my head. I can't even tune it out.
So, I drove instead of laying there in bed listening to my husband breathe his slow, repetitive breaths.
I envy how he can fall asleep so quickly and sleep so soundly.

Often as a teenager with a car of my own, a full tank of gas and nothing else to lose,
I'd sneak quietly out of my house late into the night and drive.
Most often, I'd find myself turning onto PCH and automatically turn the radio as loud as it went.
Loud enough to drown out my thoughts.

I'd put the windows down and just...drive.
Right about the time I hit Seal Beach Blvd.  I could feel my body start to relax.
The air started to smell sweet and salty and turn cool and damp.
I'd go fast and (totally not a proud moment) I'd smoke a cigarette.
For some reason those things all put together calmed me. I felt connected.
Why? I couldn't even tell you.

There's a certain place in Huntington Beach as you're driving Pacific Coast Highway,
where to your right, you don't just see the side of the road anymore but
instead the road brings you up just enough and you get that first glimpse of the ocean.
It's so amazing.

I did that tonight. It felt freeing.
I hadn't done it in a really, really long time.

When I woke up this morning, the last thing I would've guessed I'd be doing at
4 am is retracing the steps I'd taken so many times before in my youth
and sitting on the beach, camera and coffee in hand and my feet dug into the sand.

I didn't just go for the drive though.
I had a life list item to check off.

Photograph a sunrise on the beach.


As the sky started changing from black to dark purple to royal blue to beautiful shade of gray...
I let my tears fall and I didn't even know why they came but they did. And I let them.

I don't really know what I was expecting out of this experience. Maybe a golden burst of sunshine to come slowly out of the ocean. Maybe fireworks. Maybe I expected perfection. I often have
very high expectations in my head and I romanticize almost everything.
I had a vision of how this morning would go.
It did, in fact, involve those golden bursts of sun coming out of the ocean.

Let me tell you what I actually got though.

I googled the sunrise time and it said 5:54 am.

  I had time to kill so I sat for an hour watching the water and the beach goers slowly start trickling in.

First came the strange people and their metal detectors.

Then, there were the young lovers who made themselves comfortable on the lifeguard tower.
I imagined they hadn't slept all night either and they were sitting in each other's
arms talking about their dreams and their futures.
I loved watching them...

Then came the surfers.

Finally, it was almost time...
but no sun came. The sky just got lighter and lighter.
That's when I realized that the sun sets in the ocean here.
I laughed at myself because I felt so silly. I laughed so hard I felt delirious.

I didn't get up and rush out to the car to drive home even though I was so tired my eyes burned.
I walked along the water and I felt like things might just be OK.
Things just might work themselves out.
I felt like my worry or my stress wouldn't change
anything and that I should just enjoy what I have now.

On the drive home, I saw the sun... it made me smile.

Maybe I should change that life list item to SUNSET on the beach...

Regardless...I crossed one more off.