Lying in the tide, right where the waves turned over, and feeling a slight undertow ever so often as one wave advanced and the other receded at the same time.
The salty, foamy water turning my hair into something I didn't recognize, an orang-ing, dry, straggling mass that hung over my shoulders for three days untended.
Delightful crabs scuttling across the sand, white as bone or pearl.
Reading this Women of Influence book is causing me to remember another of my great childhood loves -- "The Miracle Worker," the story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. It was Anne Sullivan I really loved, and still love -- it always made me heartsick to think of her sacrifice, devoting every waking minute to another human being, with almost no life left to herself, until she died in old age, and Helen Keller required another translator. But God -- she must have known it -- that's the best way to live -- it is to have every moment of your life swallowed in supreme goodness and satisfaction. No wonder I loved her, and no longer do I feel sorry for her -- I envy her. I thought of her today perhaps because when I was around eight or nine I grew aware that she and I shared the same initials "AS." Today is the first day that I am Amanda Monteleone at work, and I have written my initials "AM" dozens of times already. It's strange, but the satisfaction of...