The Angle of Repose

I took this photo when I was in Florida in 2008, just after my mother's death. My sister, my father and I had gone down there to meet Mom's twin sister, who was too ill to make it to Massachusetts for the funeral. Now she is gone too, as is their younger sister Sheila. It struck me only today - three years later! - that the picture (twin chairs and a singleton) is a metaphor for the MacGill sisters.

But that's not why I took it. I took it for the reminder it is of the repose and calm that I dream of and only seldom achieve. I took it for the line which limits the view - making it seem attainable, measured, just there, waiting to be floated into and embraced by.

All three sisters loved the ocean; all three of them collected shells, driftwood, stones - things they could carry home to remind them of the vastness and the mystery of the sea.

I keep this photo as a little icon: a reminder of my darling mother and her sisters and an instruction to slow down, to gaze at something beautiful, to think of nothing, to feel the warm sun and the cool breeze, to dream, to pray, to be.