I stood looking at the
Gulf of Mexico; deliberating it. My husband and daughters were playing tag with
the surfs and they needed another floatie device. I had it … and they needed
it.
The reason for my
deliberation was not what you would think. In fact, there were no tar balls,
oil, or BP representatives in sight. My deliberation was based on a childhood
fear instead, a tide-pounding fear of being stung by a jellyfish. I found
myself in a “sticky” situation standing on that shoreline. Quite honestly, I’ve
never let anyone know about this fear. I’ve always inhaled my fear and put one
foot in front of the other to do what I had to do to keep my children from
thinking their mother was a total wimp.
So I left the shelter
of the blue tent with the tailgate spread of sugary sweet watermelon
h’orderves and iced-down water bottles, and gingerly stepped over a
barrier of brown seaweed. I took the plunge and faced a primitive Gulf whose
waves gently lulled me into its watery bed.
You have to know what we
face in Louisiana that makes it so contrary to the Gulf
entrances our neighbor’s (Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida) own and what
their verandas open to. Louisiana beaches are not beautiful. They are not blue
crystal. They are not sparkling mystical sands. They are not Florida.
They are not the Caribbean. For those beaches we must save up, pack up, and
travel to Florida or go on a cruise.
I shared yesterday some photos of our recent stay in Florida and I shared how the beach is not my natural summertime happy place though I'm learning a newfound fondness of its pleasures from watching those around me who love it so.
But today I’m not writing
about Florida’s beaches or the Caribbean. I’m writing about Louisiana and why
those of us who go to the Gulf beaches keep going. Sometimes it’s simply
all that we have. Nothing more. And we learn to love it, even if it isn’t white
sands and blue water.
Louisiana beaches are
primitive and murky dull. If there’s a jellyfish floating on the bottom you
aren’t going to see it until it’s too late. Louisiana beaches are not known for
their beauty. They bear only God’s imprint of life in the nude. Just as
God created beautiful people and places, He also created plain. Our beaches are
not sculptured havens; there is no commercial success invested here. They
are plain. Nowadays everything has become commercialized and
Hollywood-ized. Louisiana never was. Louisiana is still the unknowing
baby, the unruly toddler, the defiant child who rebels against being with the in-crowd.
This is not Hollywood.
This is Holly Beach. We aren’t on Broadway. We’re on the boardwalk and many of
those boardwalks got walked on and trampled by Hurricane Rita. We are
simple people living a simple life. Lifestyles have not changed much
in three generations. Many families live much the same way their
great grandparents lived. Life is more technical and comfortable, true,
but we still arise under a Louisiana sun, eat Louisiana food, raise our
children here, vote for those we choose and trust, rarely eat seafood not
caught in the Gulf’s waterways by the hand of a family member, and go to sleep
with pride that the sun still rises and sets over the state of Louisiana.
The beaches here are
known for their raw sense of taste, smell, sight, sound, and feel. We’ve had
other problems in the past such as bacteria contamination not to meant oil spills. This is life in the raw and that image—without
make-up and facelifts and computerized imaging—is not always pretty to look at.
It’s not always attractive.
The other day my
daughter asked her daddy “What exactly does attractive mean?”
Her daddy answered, “It
means that it’s pleasant to look at. Easy on the eyes”
In making everything
“attractive” and “easy on the eyes” we—in the 21st century—forget that life is
not always beautiful. Life is not always attractive. Life is not always easy.
In fact, more often than not, it is not easy at all. It is often harsh and unpleasant.
In recent history, the
people in Louisiana have had a front row viewing of life in the raw. It is not
sucralose-coated or magazine perfect. We’re becoming too familiar with camera
lens that are dirty and smeared. This panoramic view has taught us a lot about
what really matters in life and what to do when you’re not the most popular kid
in school. You learn that faith in God and family is more important than
faith in leaders and government committees. You learn to look at what you have
instead of what you don’t have and you realize that it’s good enough. You learn
that humans take a lot for granted and that if the government takes
something away it isn’t the end of the world. You also learn that you can do
without a lot of things but land and family are something you need for survival
and only God and the people of Louisiana can give you that. You learn to have
more faith in yourself than you did before.
I hesitate to say that
you have to be Louisiana born and raised to love these shores. Surely there are
others who have come to these shores and thought them beautiful despite its
mud-wafered sand, bountiful seaweed, and malt-frothy water. The shores are
not beautiful but they are beauty personified.
To love it here you have
to sense it. You have to taste it, not as an adult, but as a child.
Louisiana children love
Louisiana beaches for things we wouldn’t imagine: the sprinkle of sand in the
hot dogs, the smell of everything beach, the splintering sound the watermelon
makes when sliced with a knife, the taste of salt on your lips when you wipe
the drip of watermelon off your chin with your wet hand,
...the clicking of
seashells in plastic buckets, the cool lip of a shell on your ear and
the lisp of the seven seas in your ear,
...the clear faucet water
poured over sandy barefeet before being allowed inside the truck,
...finding a lost piece of
coral and the teeniest, tiniest baby crab in the whole world! … (look for the
tiniest crab in the world on the thumb)
… the overhead serenade
of seagulls,
...and the sight of shrimp
boats still catching edible pink shells on the horizon.
Once I reached the dip
of the embackment into the seabottoms, my husband did the gentlemanly thing and
held my blue chariot so I could slip onto the float and ride the waves. My
heroic walk into the Gulf was worthy of a trophy ride on the waves. On
that blue floating chair I no longer worried about stepping on a jellyfish
or a broken beer bottle or mistaking a wisp of seaweed around my ankles for a
jellyfish. I could just relax and enjoy the gulf breezes and the hint of salt
spray on my lips.
It took me back to my
childhood. Back to sand-encrusted hot dog buns, ankles with disappearing
feet in brown water, fears of jellyfish fields, watermelons seeds buried in
sand, castles built on sandy foundations, tar moles on flip-flops (back in the
70’s), year-old swimsuits turned dingy with chicory-bleached beach water, and the realization that
brown water feels just as good on skin smeared under a Louisiana sky as crystal
blue water feels on skin lotioned under a Florida sky.
I’m digging for
reassuring words here. Digging …
… but for a moment
nothing mattered. None of it. Not the new hurricane year. Not the oil
spill. The Gulf was, for me and my children, simply what it was. It has always
been there, always a part of my life. It isn’t the Atlantic or Pacific. It
isn’t Palm Beach. It isn’t the French Riviera. It’s just the water in my
backyard.
The same trepidation and
deliberation that foreshadowed my barefoot convergence into the Gulf has
followed me in deciding whether to write anything about the oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico in this little space. In my mind, plenty has already been
written. Too much, in fact. Too much written. Too little done. Why should this
little column that boasts, toots, and dishes up all things Louisiana spew more ink on the massive spill of words out
there? Words are sometimes simply words and don’t get the job done.
I am neither an oil rig
worker, a government official, an pipe expert, the CEO of an oil company, or a
Hollywood star with Kevin Costner status. I am none of these things. I am
simply a hometown girl from Louisiana. I am a little voice in a tidal wave of
controversy and endless discussion. This gives me no clout.
What I am is a child who
was brought to these beaches as a child. I am a mother with children who are
native to Louisiana and who I wish to see grow healthy and happy and at home
here in the wilds of Louisiana. I am a granddaughter whose grandparents
all came from the oak-lineage of Acadian roots to the prairie farms of
Southwest Louisiana where the Cajun drawl was sharpened by a twist of Texas
twang.
My grandfather worked in
the oil fields of Louisiana and my husband’s grandfather had oil wells in
Nebo, LA that were divided nine times over then split again amongst my
husband and his brothers. It’s a mere drop in a much larger bucket. Our son now
works for an oil company. Pretty ironic, isn’t it? Yet that
is the circle of life here in Louisiana. We depend upon these oil refineries
for our livelihood. Many workers are fishermen themselves. We live and work in
harmony and peace with the shrimpers and fishermen who make their modest living
in the shadow of those oil rigs which bring in substantial incomes and a better
way of life for Louisiana. It’s a dance between big business and the people of
Louisiana. We have danced well for decades. Now someone must pay the fiddler.
Who will pay? Who will?
We all will.
But, to keep a postive
note here, it really isn’t within big business or the government’s power
to give or take away from us. It’s what God and family hands down to us
that matters and what we do with it. What have you done with your children and
grandchildren this summer? Have you sat indoors watching CNN or FOX and
berating the government? Or did you offer your children a taste of
salt and wind from one of Louisiana’s many beaches? Did you offer him a chance
to carve his name in the sand, and look out over a Gulf where the water still
feeds brown pelicans and porpoise still ride in unison next to shrimp boats?
Have you taken your
children down to the Gulf and let them look in wonder over the horizon to the
end of the world? And know that their feet stand on a slippery
slope? Do they realize how shifting, how unstable, how fading sand really
is?
I want my children to
know that not all beaches are beautiful and pure. Some are just plain ol’
beaches, a little tired, a little used, but, like an old pair of flip-flops,
they are comfortable. Their simplicity is what welcomes the simple folk. These
beaches are just as alive and teeming with life as their neighbor’s sandbars.
They are worth our time and our admiration.
Life is so simple
really, especially in Louisiana. Don’t allow the hurricanes of defeat and doubt
to take away your faith in Louisiana. Take the hand of your children and walk
towards the Gulf sometime this summer … this month. It’s still out there,
cleaner than I’ve seen it in a long time. It’s beautiful. Don’t listen to
everything you’re fed on the evening news. Instead, take your child by the
hand and feed him a piece of Louisiana this summer. If you don’t, who will?
Rest assured, it won’t be the oil companies and it won’t be the government.
It can only be you.
Let your child embrace
Louisiana as it is now. Let his eyes see the water. Let his face feel the wind.
Let his ears hear the cry of the seagulls overhead. Let his hands
roll and inspect petals of shell in his hands. Let his tongue taste a
watermelon on the beach.
Future generations
of Louisiana may not remember Katrina and Rita of 2005 or the oil spill of
2010 but they will remember your hand in theirs and the beauty of a day on the
beach with you. And they’ll be able to tell their children and their grandchildren
that Louisiana’s beaches were just as beautiful as any other beach God
ever made. Most important of all, your children will know that you cared
about them and the place they call home.
Oh, one last thing … be
sure to bring a watermelon with you.
(Today's pictures are from a day long past, but were taken on Holly Beach. And sand is sand...no matter what beach you're on.)
