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Mothers Day weekend was not too long ago. For many years now, I have spent Mothers day weekend in Nags Head with one of my friends at her mother’s cottage. May is a lovely time of year, the water too cold to swim but a time when the beach is relatively deserted and a pleasure to walk.This year, like most years, I spent hours walking along the beach, smelling the ocean mist, feeling the warmth of the sun on my back, the tension of work being lifted and watching the sandpipers running back and forth trying not to get their feet wet.
This year, unlike previous years, I spent a great deal to time thinking about my sister Priscilla. I wondered why I could not recall spending time with her at the beach. My only memory of Priscilla was at Palm Beach, the year she gathered family together for a fabulous week at Kiplinger’s Bay Tree Lodge. I remember that beach excursion because Pris lathered herself from head to toe with SP60, wore a huge hat and had a linen shirt covering her arms. Her concern was that we were not to be on the beach between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., we had vinegar in the event that there were jelly fish in the water and, of course we brought many bottles of water to keep from dehydrating. She made her sun-worshipping sisters feel like they were going to have sun stroke at any moment.
This year, unlike previous years, as I walked the beach, I wondered what would have drawn my sister’s eye. Would it have been the color of the small moss colored rocks, the unusual shape of sea glass, the water rushing over tiny sand pebbles, a piece of drift wood, the sand print of a seagull, the white foam bouncing over the sand. What would have drawn my sister’s eye? What would she have stopped and admired. What would she have noticed, drawn my attention too, made me see.
This year, unlike previous years, I really missed my sister Priscilla. I missed the opportunities to walk the beach with her. I missed her eyes.
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