Windswept Wonder

marykay celebrated her 70th birthday this past weekend here at Little Renaissance with her family, Rick, and me!   Her children (adult children) Dominic, Dave, Rosemary, and Mike Jude were here with her, celebrating their remarkable mother.

marykay booked this weekend’s yoga retreat with us well over a year ago.  The idea came to her as she was here for a yoga and writing retreat, enjoying her room, which she calls “the tree house room” because the room is on the second floor and the windows in the room look out over trees, giving a tree house feel!  She thought Little Renaissance would be the perfect place to ring in and celebrate the beginning of her 70th year of life!

The theme of the weekend was “The Gift of the Present”.  This theme was marykay’s idea.  She wanted this weekend to be not so much about nostalgia, but rather about being present and celebrating the present moment, feeling free, expressing who we are today.  Taking into consideration that marykay is such a warm, loving, positive, and  healthy person, as well as such a true inspiration to all who know her, I thought this weekend had another underlying theme and that was “The Gift of Wellness and Wholeness”.  All weekend, in my head I heard my parents, (referring to our ocean home), exclaiming, “This is a house of health!”.  I felt the trees around the house, the nearby ocean, the clean air, the majestic skies, the special light, the strong wind storm we had on Saturday (!) and the many does, bucks, and fawns who walked by the property this weekend, as well as the little raccoon who came up to the window to practically say hello, all attesting to my parents’ exclamation of this house and sanctuary as representing Nature as Healer!

What makes you feel ALIVE, STRONG, AND WHOLE?  What are your passions in life and what do you value most?  Relationships, sincerity, community, authenticity….All of our discussions wound their way back to deeply  meaningful explorations and self-expression.

Last time marykay was here at Little Renaissance, we saw the snowy owls.  Considering the snowy owls have spent the past two winters here, and the fact that a local resident claimed to have seen a snowy owl at Protection Point on October 25th, we had hopes that we might have a snowy owl encounter.  We all thought it would have been nice for marykay to see a snowy owl on her birthday weekend.  Reality is that we didn’t see any snowy owls because they are still up in the Alaskan tundra.  In lieu of snowy owls, on Saturday we encountered an exciting wind storm on the beach!!  Below is the poem that describes Saturday.  This poem was written by the group.  Everyone wrote a line and then the lines were randomly picked and thus the ordering for the poem below was born!  The poem came together so perfectly, a product of a shared experience by many individual creative minds:

LOOKING FOR OWLS

Fine ocean spray
Flotsam on my back

Salty seas new car smell

Standing still moving
Gust thrusts
Ocean, Earth and Sky
Winter gives a wink

Windy seas washing
Wind blown sand  off jetty

Bump in the road

Here it comes again

Whole Family
Leaning Together
Into the Wind

In and out of the water
Sand in your shoes
We came, we saw, we gritted our teeth

Waves pelting the air
Searching for Significance
Unseasonably warm

Windswept wonder worked its wayward weight

Sea of sand blowing
Human arrogance
Blown away by the fall storm

From inside
The autumn storm
Looks like a summer day

Cormorants flying
Backwards into the wind

Rock  sculptures barricaded the the blustery beach
Celebrating 70 sending sea foam scattering sand
Freckled sand outlined the expedition

( Japanese Renge Poetry attempt..thanks to Rick, Fran, Dominic, Dave, Rosemary, Mike Jude and marykay–3 november 2013..Little Renaissance)

I truly hope you have continued to read all the way to this point, because the best is yet to come!  As we were about to leave the house for our walk today, David spotted something unbelievable!  A barred owl was sitting on a branch right by the hot tub!  marykay got to see her owl!!!  Our owl was majestic, huge, wise looking.  He looked right back at us, unafraid.  We stood still looking, thinking this is surely a surreal moment in time, a gift of nature for marykay!  The best kind of gift, the unplanned, the spontaneous, that which cannot be purchased….a gift of transcendence.  Before we left the owl, I thanked him for gracing our day and marykay’s actual birthday (today) with his presence!