A November Sunday at Treasure Island

This year's Treasure Island sand sculpture competition, called "Sanding Ovations," was entertaining, with the usual food and craft vendors and a jazz band.  We took a look on the final day, Sunday, November 20.  

Roy, a trombonist, is seated onstage in the center of the above picture, just in front of the standing trumpet holder.  Look for the jazzy tan hat and requisite shades.

Although the sand sculptures suffered a bit from heavy winds on Saturday night, they were still impressive.  Some examples:

The sky was a brilliant blue, the sand was white, and the day was perfect . . .

 We had a good day!

Entertaining Birds

Birds can be so entertaining.  For a time here at our townhome on the west coast of Florida, I'd been regularly awakened at about 5 am each day by a show-off mockingbird in the tree just outside our bedroom window.  It's a good thing that I'm a morning person, and that I wake in good humor, and that Greg can sleep through the racket of the trash truck in the neighborhood across from us, lifting a dumpster, emptying it, and crashing it to the pavement.   A few birds wouldn't even register on his noise tolerance gizmo. 


I get the litany of song snippets as if the fellow is saying "If you think that was a good one, just wait till you hear this!"  Then follows song-hopping with chirping, cooing, peeping, warbling, trilling, with two- and three-part melodies (maybe a calliope song slipping in there). 


A hedge borders the drive along the front of our building;  when the lawn service trims the greenery so that it becomes a compact shelf, often a Great White Egret stands atop it, with his long thin neck stick-straight like a vertical swiveling periscope, watching for the movement of the disturbed insects.  Then in a very slow forward movement, his head pivots down so that his outstretched neck is about ten o'clock to the hedge, and in a ballet movement, he lifts one skinny knobby backward-bending leg ever so slooooowly and steps forward, in a comical slow-motion creeping.  

Great White Egret
Picture taken from our (2nd floor) living room window

Up above the hedge, we've spotted an osprey sitting on a decorative 15-foot streetlight, skulking, full of menace (my perception), eyes-darting, looking for mammalian side-dishes to his usual saltwater meals. Feels kind of creepy knowing I'm being watched, so if I'm out there, I just keep moving.  Ospreys aren't as big as eagles, but they're very aggressive hunters and the local ones have effectively contained out of the ospreys' hunting area our resident American Bald Eagle couple that lives a few minutes' walk right down our road.  Our friends Roy and Sue aren't so entertained by "their" osprey who enjoys perching on their sailboat's mast -- doing what birds do, plus eating fish and making all kinds of a mess.   


Back on the subject of mockingbirds, on our sailing trip to Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina,  Captain Roy, wife Sue, Greg and I, while there, went on an island walk to the lighthouse;  our attention was snagged by some squawking and rustling.  We looked above a large full-leafed tree and discovered the antics of a male mockingbird in some kind of pre-mating performance.  The object of his desire remained hidden from us, but she must have been some kind of wonderful for the effort he was making -- shooting straight up from the top of the tree about ten feet, shrieking, wings flapping, body flipping and twisting in an aerial show, back to the leafy branches, and then up again, over and over.  It was almost as if he had a tiny trampoline hidden from our view, that was launching him above the treetop.  We watched throughout his performance;   I'm not sure what good he would be as a suitor after all the energy he expended to impress the object of his ardor. 


I've got far more funny bird stories -- (ask me sometime about the Hilton Head seagull that pooped in Greg's soup) -- but I suppose I'd better pace myself.  Wouldn't want you to think that I've gone all birdbrained.    

Inner Parent

Studies of the "inner child" are ubiquitous. And I know that in particularly challenging times in my life, my becoming aware of previously unrecognized fears and needs has reawakened a part of me;  and that now this "rebirth" is contributing enormously to my peace and happiness.  I remember that shortly before my first marriage (and well before psychologists had popularized their research about it), I had written a farewell letter to the childlike part of myself, saying that now I would be entering a new dimension of my life that had no time or place for her.  Some years later, in the counseling that was helping me cope with the loss of my marriage, I suddenly recalled having written something;  I found it in a box of papers from my "premarriage" life, read it and was taken aback by the unconscious knowing, for at the end of my farewell to my former self, I admitted my fear that I was giving up a part of me that was important and that I feared I might never get back.

When I took this letter to my next session and read it to Tina, my therapist, she visibly shuddered, and I remember her soft eyes of compassion.  We worked hard to restore the part of me that I so totally needed to get back.

In writing this, I am setting out to record, not accounts of my "inner child," a subject so overwritten as to cause immediate eye-rolling, but to talk instead about my "inner parent," the pesky do-gooder, hyper-vigilant, task-organizer, safety-ensurer, priority-organizer.  I'm tired just thinking about her.  And the most irritating time that she starts scurrying around inside of my head is when I am meditating.  There I sit, fully intentioned to release myself into a peace, a calm, envisioning a circle of light-infused love, feeling my breath, my heart, opening for a spirit-blessing, when "bam!" the door to my room crashes into the wall, as this frenzied overlord barges in and starts rummaging in the drawers for pressing to do, looking at dusty tabletops for grocery lists, in the hamper for dirty laundry, and in my desk for appointment calendars.  No matter that I try to ignore the rude intrusion, that I take a deep breath and slowly release, and return once more to the edge of peace, she chides, demands, finger-wags in my face, and yells: "This is important!  You must do this, this, this!"

So far I've patiently out-waited her, but, my goodness, she can be such a bother.  I can hear her even now --that I need to go to the grocery store, Christmas is coming and I'm not ready, and oh yes, when in the world am I going to plan the Christmas dinner?  If I have been able to awaken my inner child, how might I find the lullaby to settle into a sweet nap that pesky and intrusive parent?