Ups and Downs

It's been a wild month so far, full of highs and lows, ups and downs. I spent the first weekend of July on Cape Cod, attending the annual Wampanoag tribal pow wow, meeting new friends and doing research for a project I'm working on. It was my first trip to "the Cape," a beautiful green place, crowded with summer visitors but still mostly free of crass commercialism. (Which is not to say I couldn't find a Starbucks.)

Shrubs and grasses grow almost to the ocean, stopping only at a wavy line of dunes near the water's edge. The surf was warm and the sand coarse and clean, strewn with bits of seaweed and driftwood, little shells and polished rocks, along with a couple of dead jellyfish and a used hypodermic needle. O brave new world, that hath such garbage in it.

Back home again, Bob and I had a great time entertaining family visitors for the Fourth. Terra Nova bustled with people and dogs. By Saturday evening everyone had left except our little Cavalier spaniel "granddog"; we'd seen his mom off to Australia for a month that afternoon.

I won't go into the week's disappointments, except to say sometimes your goals look farther away than ever. But I had a bit of insight into that last week when we took all the dogs to the beach. Neither of my Newfoundland water dogs retrieved the boat cushion we tossed for them, so I had to swim out and get it myself. Between a stiff breeze and a steady current, it would've been smarter to just let the thing go, but by then I was committed to the task.

From my perspective in the water, the farther I swam, the farther away the cushion looked. In the meantime, I could feel the current working against me, which made my progress seem even more illusory. The only way I could tell I was making any headway at all was that the beach kept shrinking away behind me. Finally, I got too tired to keep going, so I flipped over on my back to rest and just kept moving my arms, the old elementary backstroke from childhood swim lessons. And then, miracle of miracles, when I resumed my watery march toward the cushion, I was almost on top of it.

There must be a sermon in here somewhere. You try and try and try, even to the point of exhaustion, and all that time it seems you're not making any progress whatsoever. Then you rest for a little while and, voila, your goal is suddenly within reach. I don't understand this phenomenon, don't know that it's a general rule, but still I find it encouraging. So you lose a little momentum from time to time. Things don't always turn out the way you'd hoped. You have a bad day. Maybe the answer isn't always trying harder. Maybe sometimes it's better just to stop and breathe for a while instead.