Nothing But Blue Skies Makes for Great Therapy

Nothing But Blue Skies

Makes for Great Therapy

A couple of weeks ago, our family of four headed to the Gulf Coast for a day of fishing and crabbing. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, in Long Beach, about a mile inland. Memories of my treks to the beach on foot and bicycle over the years still lend a therapeutic touch when life is rough and unkind. To see that distant place where water gives way to southern sky is to feel the years and worries softly melt away.

When we walked out on Moses’ pier in Gulfport, I reveled in the warm breezes of a late September day and watched the fishermen trolling with baited lines. The brown pelicans dipped into the surging waters, great silent flocks of them that had, years ago, all but disappeared. They perched on pilings, vigilant, real and present survivors of the ecological nightmare of pesticides now banned from use. The pelicans of perseverance. I took comfort in their miraculous return.

My husband baited crab traps and my daughter lowered them into the murky depths. We waited in camp chairs, studying the horizon for sails, mesmerized by the lulling slosh of waves and familiar call of gulls overhead. My son and a friend tried their luck with new lures and live shrimp. There is no substitute for the sun and wind, no other remedy that works so well as to hear and taste and see and touch those things that reassured us in our youth. It is all the more pleasurable that they are the very things that time cannot alter, cannot remove or make less than spectacular.

We moved our operation to a pier in Ocean Springs, caught a few more crabs, and watched the boys pull in a little of everything but no keepers. I stretched out on a concrete pipe protruding from the shore as the late afternoon rays filtered through amazing clouds that eased past like a parade. Blue skies wrapped my spirit in soothing stillness. Whispering reeds and pampas grass nudged my thoughts toward all that is good and right in the world. Laughter, music, evenings spent in good company with sand pipers and herons, dolphins and fiddler crabs, these are the glad tidings that those gulf waters bring.

My children are teenagers. They are finding their way. In their time, they will see with adult eyes the things of their youth that made them happy. They will feel pain and sense loss and experience disappointment with a grown up perspective. Hopefully, they will find themselves immersed in an incredible day at the beach, full of the wonder of life, and share it with their families. And perhaps the pelicans will take flight just as the sun glints weakly from the western horizon, reminding them of a calm September evening spent in the company of their mom and dad. Then, blue sky memories of my south coast home will bring them the joy it has always brought me, the healing power and endless comfort found only in the natural world.