High Tide

There have been milestones I skipped right over. Others, I have stumbled on, but none have I clung to in a desperate attempt to find an anchor.

This morning, I waited out my first tropical storm of 2007, the second of this young, two-day old season. (The first storm zoomed up the east coast of Florida while I was in New York last month.)

Now I am watching the high tide and westerly winds combine forces to push a surge beyond what yesterday's full moon could do. I believe it just peaked, as I have been observing the debris of nature(twigs and flower blossoms) and man (plastic grocery bags, mainly) float out of the canal. Across the brown waters, the tell-tale sign of the high water mark stains the concrete barrier wall like ring-around-the-collar. (Do wives ever fret about that embarrassment?)

The bayou seeped over its embankments and stranded seawater on the road beyond the canal’s bridge. A few drivers challenged the standing waters, but I did a U-turn in my Jeep and went out the back way to Winn-Dixie in search of a can of tuna, a lunchtime craving.

On the dock watching the water rise under a clearing sky (totally different than this morning when the skies dumped up to five inches on a parched ground—last rain was 25 days ago and I don’t remember it.), I realized my birthday is this Friday. However, that isn’t the significant milestone. I am the last of five to have their first birthday since Mom passed way. I suddenly felt washed over with emptiness and some guilt by just noting my siblings’ birthdays during the past nine months. God, a birthday without the mother of my life.

I have managed to get past every twenty-eighth day of the month without thinking of Mom’s death. I might have thought about it the day before or a few days afterwards, but I never caught myself lingering in thought on that day. That was until last month. Nine months have past, the time it takes to create a new life. I guess I am still grieving. I lost a few tears in the outgoing tide.