In Waves

(Note: This is the song. Listen to the whole album if you have the time.)

Usually, when I think of waves, I think of large masses of salt water hurling themselves at a grey-green beach somewhere in between Portland and Newport. But, today I find myself sitting not five feet from the edge of Lake Ossooyos and the waves are far from bombastic. These are little waves that caress the imported sand the way my little sister's pencil caresses notebook paper, telling stories without words.

I am on vacation. I am relaxing with my family. One month ago, I had work to do. Lots of work. I got it done though. I finished my Honors Project, never to touch academia again. I graduated from SPU, those hallowed grounds where we lost our parents' faith and maybe even found our own. I married off four of my best friends to one another. I watched my sister walk across a field in my hometown where she officially left childhood behind.

Still, the wanting comes in waves.

It would seem like this current crashing is a big one. Swells up above my little head, rushing towards the shore to flatten the little sandcastles of understanding, threatening to utterly destroy my small constructs of reality. But, I wonder.

There's a water skier on the lake, and the speed boat that tows him sends up a wake that looks so tumultuous, so cacophonous. But, by the time the swells make it to my toes, those gigantic waves have shrunk to a bearable size. They don't even come close to my little brother's sand fortress. The one he constructed with the aid of the Canadian vacationers.

I wonder if this huge wave, which, by all accounts crested about a week ago, will do just the same. I wonder if the shoreline is my present, or if it is my history. I wonder when the wave finally reaches the beach, if it will be only mildly more significant than the gentle caress that the lake prefers.

By all rights, I should be tumbling, falling, drowning in the surf, my land-borne limbs flailing in the onslaught. But instead I sit here. Comfortable, but for the over zealous wind.

Maybe I'm just kidding myself. Maybe I am being tossed about in the endless ocean. But maybe, just maybe, I'm on solid ground. Maybe the far off tempest, so unbearably large and terrible from the vantage point of the little boat caught in the thick of it, will only cause the slightest of change in the usual high tide. Or maybe, I'm just in the eye of the storm, and the worst is yet to come.

In any case, I am at peace. My entire world has changed, just as it promised it would. But, I am at peace.

Let the next wave crash.