​I was talking with my youngest daughter last week. We were talking about friendships. But not just that. It started with a conversation about friendships and moved into a reflection on the impact that is left by all the people in our lives. Whether an instant/just this moment/a one off, or a lifetime of friendship and deep connection, it is those markings—my daughter calls them footprints—that stay imprinted on our souls.
 
Picture a beach. And as you walk along your foot, it prints itself into the sand. Sometimes the beach is soft and easily impressioned and deep indentations sink below the surface. Other times, barely a mark is made, despite the weight against the ground. 
 
And then the sea. It washes these barely left marks away in just one rhythm of its tide, while those other, deep imprints last over numerous ebbs and flows of waves.
 
This is us. This is us in relationship with others. 
 
And it’s not merely length of time that we play along the shore. Oh no, it’s not just that. Sometimes maybe, but that is not the only requisite. How deep the imprint goes until it finds our soul is also of other calculations. 
 
Sometimes we walk the miles of beach with this one other being, and not one dent is made in the grains beneath us.
 
And other times, it is an instant, a one step, that forces such a deep groove into a soft sand. And stays with us, maybe for a lifetime. Maybe more.
 
And then, oh then, there are those that visit many beaches with us. Soft sand, and hard, lay beneath us as we walk. The water’s edge may wash away some moments that we leave those tracks that track our path. But these footprints, they linger longer, and we can see them, many steps behind. And we can feel them forever.  
 
These are those soul friends. They make deep, deep hollows that, while softened by the salty sea, never quite balance back to the level of the surrounding sand. 
 
The beach has been transformed. We have been transformed. 

I have a new car. A green Kia Soul, 2018, 51,009 miles, great price. Great car. Standard transmission.

I sold my old car. To CarMax. Have you ever bought or sold a car a CarMax? They are like the best thing that happened to buying a used car or selling your used car. Like ever. I sold them my car. 

I sold them my 2012, gray Kia Soul, 149,911 thousand miles, manual transmission, keys that don’t work and I could no longer lock the doors, and the engine light is on ALL THE TIME, and even Kia Corporate—plug that shit into their universal diagnostic world—couldn’t figure out what was wrong car that I just love. 

And CarMax bought it from me. Angels camouflaged as car sales. 

And I bought my new car. From CarMax. My new, new car. Because my first new car was an automatic transmission, Kia Soul, 44,506 thousand miles. Great price. Great car. Did I say automatic transmission.

I was in Massachusetts. 

We have a new baby. As in, my son and daughter-in-law of the Framingham Roses brought a new Rose into this world. So I was there. Doing that Grandma thing that included this amazing gymnastic class with my older two Framingham Grandsons of Rose, and playing with them—a lot—and having sweet conversation with my son and daughter-in-law, and watching this amazing new human grow and change every day and just being with this amazing now family of five. 

And while I was there, my amazing Husband of the Ojai Roses, he bought me this Green Kia Soul, automatic transmission car.

And I drove it when I came back home. 

And I so didn’t like it. Because it was not a manual transmission car. Which I love to drive. It was not that. And I felt like I was giving something up. That was bigger than that giving up my standard—it’s so fun to drive and I love to downshift on the curves and I have control of the road—car. 

The lack of the kind of car I love was more than the lack of the kind of car I love. I gave something up. It felt like my identity. In a six-speed manual transmission car.

I am not ready to give this part of my identity up. Hence the return and exchange and the one I have now.

We take things that are in our lives and they become us. What I drive. The clothes I wear. The things I do and say. Where I live and how I live and who I love. 
​
I gave my up apartment. The one on the beach. In Scituate. On the water, with the sun streaming in, and the 11-minute drive to our beach in Cohasset. The beach we own. Like we own a beach. God, I love this. It makes me laugh. I gave it up, after a sweet 6-month stint that I thought would last longer when I stepped into it back in late September into October to start my lease there.
 
I gave up this apartment because, oh my goodness, the drive up to my son and daughter-in-law and grandkids including this last new one that was just this past month ago born, this drive, it’s long. It’s really long. Like really long. Like more than an hour long. 
 
I thought this would be hard to do. To give up this space. I thought I still needed it. 
 
For a while I needed it. First the one in the woods on the Concord River with my Emu down a path through the trees. And then this, this morning light on the water outside my door just an 11-minute drive to my beach up the beach, apartment.
 
I thought it would be hard to give this up. It wasn’t.
 
I changed my earrings. This is a weird one. I have these really amazing diamond earrings. Great story about them.  Back when my kids were little, like little little, I had this feeling that I had nothing of my own.  Garth had his office with this amazing high ceiling. And his great job and while our money was our money it felt like his money. And I felt like I didn’t have anything. Which was so not true. I had everything. Yet it felt, in this moment, that nothing was mine. The kids had their rooms.  I had the floor in the kitchen below the sink, where I would sit because this is where the heating vent was and oh it is fucking cold in Massachusetts.  So I had that. And felt like I didn’t have anything else. 
 
And so we decided I would open a bank account and we would put some money into it, so I would have something. And we did.  
 
We moved in this money and once I had it…I was like…I actually don’t really need this. It was the fact that it was possible. And so I took this money and I bought myself these kickass diamond earrings.  The only earrings I wear.
 
Until now.
 
I bought a new pair of earrings. These tiny hoops. Still with diamonds but little ones set in these hammered gold hoops that sit close on my ears. 
 
They look different.
 
I am different.
 
I read this quote a few days ago. By Emily Maroutain. “You will know that you are completely done with something when you give it up, and you feel freedom instead of loss.”
 
Yes.
 
There are other things I am slowly giving up. That are not in alignment with me. There is loss still, so I know I am not completely done yet.
 
The earrings are good, though. And I do love this new car.