Yesterday I took my usual day-off seawall walk, bareheaded and brisk heading out in the brilliant chilly sunshine towards 2nd Beach, my exercise touchstone!
It was so great to see the other walkers/joggers out there too enjoying the sun after a long bout of cold rain.
I could not help but notice some slender daffodils and lavender crocus patches standing in prompt new praise of the sun. A glimpse of these put a lift in my step.
As I rounded the seawall corner by The Engagement Rings (one of a series minimalist steel sculptures erected last year) I could hear a furious beat box rhythm emerging from somewhere in a treed area up on the rise close by. Others ahead of me were looking too. It sounded a bit like a drummer with a full kit, practicing.
On the hill just opposite the Parks Board office, the drummer finally came into view.
He was seated on a park bench, dressed in the ragged garb of a street person, and was drumming on an upturned 5-gallon plastic bucket, the kind used in the food industry. He was using something for drumsticks but I couldn’t see what these were. The rhythms were erratic and somewhat uneven but I could hear the intensity of the effort to make them smooth and celebratory and could plainly see the capped head bent to the task, looking downward toward the drum and ignoring the watchers passing below.
These beats were definitely healing ones!
Further along as I rounded the pool at 2nd Beach, a family of three came towards me. The father had turned and was watching his young daughter about to race along with her mom. They poised and the mom shouted, “Ready, settee…GO!”
This phrase immediately bought back a whole slough of childhood memories. It was and is the strange, magical, ancient and so familiar language of my own childhood.
Almost in the same moment, as they sprang into a run, the little girl, her light blond curls windblown, gleefully cried out, “Yes, settee, mommy, settee, settee, settee…”
The peals of her delicate laughter were ringing in my ears as I walked away.
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What a gorgeous place you have to be--that seawall. I went walking today as I have an unexpected two day break from my work. I thought I had to work through the teacher's convention and late yesterday realized that I had a holiday instead. Ready settee goo indeed!.
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