Jupiter Beach 1985 By Loren Crawford

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Jupiter Beach 1985

I gathered stones shaped by the sea over centuries, smooth and rounded, each with one or two perfect circles worn through them. How can there be so many holy stones all in one place? Comfort in my hands, I turned them over and over before putting them in the plastic bag I found skimming the sand. My father’s shoulders glistened under the suntan lotion, his life in the sun told on his skin. My brother dove over and over into waves that carried him back to the beach. I walked the thin line between sea and shore feeling clear, untroubled and surprised by that.  On that thin moving line where past and future meet, I collected my stones. We swam, talked, lay silent in the sun, read our books. On the way home we stopped at the grocery to get food for dinner and the way my father tossed filet mignons, already bacon wrapped, into the cart, casual and grand, without looking at the price and calculating cost has stayed with me forty years. The rush of love I felt was a powerful tide that pulled me in and for a day I trusted it. Our dinner sparkled, we all laughed and laughed, my father, my brother, my Great-Uncle Roberts the actor who paid us a special visit. There was nothing but hope that night- my father’s new job, his rental house in Jupiter, his six months of sobriety, anything was possible. Back in Chicago I made a mobile out of scraps of wood, eye hooks and fishing line, suspending the stones through their sea-worn holes. They are suspended still. There you are, I always say, the one uncomplicated day.

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Loren Crawford finds hope in teaching and creating theater with young people at a school she loves in Louisville, Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: The Journal, and Untelling: The Literary and Arts Magazine of Hindman Settlement School.
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