Walking the shoreline, I observe how the wind behaves—like a relentless, fussy mother, scouring footprints, scrubbing the sand smooth, only to have the tide return; like a reluctant prodigal daughter post-college, job loss, divorce, strewing seaweed, cracked shells, crab claws, armless starfish, the tumbled detritus of death and destruction on a tiny scale, all of which I paw through with eyes and hands, ignoring the bigger picture of the sunrise at my back, narrowing in on the wrack and ruin at my feet, an empty-nest magpie looking for the next bright shiny to fill her whole of loss.
Linda Lowen has published micromemoir in the New York Times’ Tiny Love Stories column and in The Writer magazine. She lives in Syracuse, New York. Find Linda at lindalowen.com.