The Shark Lady

I realized last Monday night while sitting in the audience at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), that I probably would not have made a very good marine biologist......and to think that for years, it was what I told everyone I wanted to be.

The presentation was by Sylvia Earl, aka "The Shark Lady," and she's been around a long while. The NYAS has been running a series of lectures given by women scientists, to encourage young women scientists, and those of us chicks who just have a general interest in science. Of course there are men at these lectures too, but the focus is on women who have become scientist and how their interest was nurtured to allow them to become successful in their chosen career.

Sylvia Earl is the Jacque Cousteau of women a friend recently informed me. I had no idea. My interest in marine biology was so long ago, that I can't say I've kept up with the times at all. Although I was there having bought the series of tickets, there were women in the audience who were obviously thrilled to be there, and upon approaching the microphone at the end of the lecture to ask questions, positively gushed, while telling Sylvia what a huge influence she was in their lives. (Many of these women were very knowledgeable about sharks too.)

Perhaps if it had been Jacque Cousteau I would have been hugely impressed, and I feel awful and disloyal saying that I knew so little about one of my own gender who is so obviously well known and respected in the field of marine biology. Heck, the woman has done all kinds of stuff for National Geographic and the American Museum of Natural History, and holds the record for the deepest dive by a women (I believe).............I should be more impressed!

However, whether or not I was impressed isn't the point, what is, was my realization that my long ago dream would probably not have ended up being a career path I would have wanted to stay on. Sylvia was quite excited to describe in detail what it was like to, oh..... dissect a shark to see if it gave birth to live young, or released eggs. It was at that moment it dawned on me that I would not have liked doing that. I hated dissecting frogs in middle school and fetal pigs in college! Sylvia talked about peering into the murky water at a NYC aquarium while growing up, and wanting to be in that dark green water for real. Probably not something I would have enjoyed either. In retrospect, I think I might have made a kick-ass marine ecologist or environmentalist. But, we'll never know. I'm a helper...it's what I do and will probably always be what I do. Perhaps in my next life some new career path will unfold....it could happen.......

Beach scented perfume

Published in the Long Island Advance, September 20th

Last Sunday night was the one of those perfect evenings for walking. Almost fall like, it was cool and clear and the scents that perfumed the air overwhelmed me.

When walking outdoors, I have a few routes that I take that always lead me to the bay. Even on very cold winter days, that’s the direction I head, never north, always south, because I love the smell of the sea air.

On this particular evening as I started out toward the bay the first scent I noticed was that of a backyard fire place. I love the smell of fire places and used to have one in my yard. We would sit around it at night, drink coffee, talk with whoever showed up to sit and watch the fire burn, and listen to the Screech Owl that lived in the woods nearby.

Layered over top of the burning wood smell, was the scent of autumn clematis in full bloom. Growing vigorously throughout the summer, it blooms in a mass of tiny white flowers that perfume the air with a heady, sweet scent. This particular smell I recognized immediately, having planted this variety of clematis in my garden years ago and each summer, watching as it climbed its way up the side of my dining room window, with the scent of the tiny white flowers traveling into the house on the heels of the breeze that blew in through the open windows.

As I got closer to the bay, the scent of the sea air mingling with the others made me feel wistful, missing home before I have even left it. I love this smell, the smell of the bay and nearby ocean, that mixture of seaweed and salt, shells and suntan lotion. I have a “sun and sand” candle and a perfume called “Beach,” both of which if I close my eyes and breath in deeply, remind me of what it’s like to lie on the beach and listen to the surf roll onto shore, and watch the gulls as they glide on the ocean breezes.

As I continued my walk my son pulled up to the stop sign on the corner of Brook Street and Rider Ave. Having only seen him a short while before for dinner, it was amusing to run into him again so soon. Further up the road, I saw my father as he rode his bike across Rider, heading back home from his evening bike ride and one of my old neighbors as she cut her lawn. It’s odd to feel so excited about moving away and so sad about it too, sad to think about missing out on these every day encounters that for so long I have taken for granted.

My pile of boxes in the living room of my brother’s house is getting larger. I keep trying to keep in mind what he said when I was starting to say good-bye. (I’ve been starting to say good-bye in a variety of ways for a while now.) He reminded me that I’m moving to Queens, not California. I often use that line when talking about my move to other family members, like my 12 year old niece Regina, who I have also lived with for the past three years. We are making plans now for things she would like to do when she comes to visit me. This way, she too can be excited when I move, and not sad.

There’s a very good possibility that the next time I appear here, I will have written this column from an apartment in Jackson Heights. Hopefully I will be able to regal you with amusing tales and observations about how different life will become. I’m thinking that possibly I can get over the homesick part prior to actually leaving, at least that’s what I’m going to hope will happen. I’m feeling a bit dramatic about it all; you would think that I wasn’t planning to be back at least every other weekend. And in between, I can always turn out the lights, light my “sun and sand” candle, spray on my “Beach” perfume and close my eyes and breathe deeply.

(I can't believe I still have not posted my birthday column. Actually, I'm still working on it. )

Building sandcastles

This afternoon as I sit here on the beach, sand sifting between my purple polished toes, I am watching as the sandcastle that is so diligently being built by a young father and his children continues to wash away a little at a time. Yet, it seems to matter not to them. They dig the trench around it deeper, and pile large buckets of sand onto it in order to shore it up; squeals of laughter from the children and smiles from their father, neither caring that the waves steals bits of their ocean front home with each roll onto shore.

Sitting on my borrowed sand chair, I watch three, thirty-something father’s play with their young children. One holds his daughter who looks no more that four on a Boogie board as it skates around atop the small waves that curl near the shore line. Little boys, also with Boogie boards run out to meet these waves and ride them back onto the beach, future reflections of the older men who are playing with them now, and I wonder…..how do my children feel about their *not so long ago* childhoods? Just the other day my daughter declared that she does not think she like’s being an adult and I felt a sense of relief after hearing that.

I’ve been wondering lately if my children missed that they didn’t have parents who “played” with them. Sure, we had fun from time to time, but most of what I remember was tinged by stress, those foreboding feelings that always existed for me as an adult. If I could go back and rewrite any part of my life and theirs, this is the part I would rewrite….the childhood of my children. I would go back and try to have more fun with them, not letting those adult stresses that I felt so acutely in the past, impact on them, or at least trying not too. Yet given the fact that my daughter would like to go back to her childhood, maybe my stress didn’t affect her or her brother as much as I fear that it did.

Do my children remember their childhoods with fondness? Perhaps they do. Erin could not wait to grow up and become an adult and do the things that adults get to do. And here is she, now an adult, wishing to be a child again.

I’m hoping to be in a position to one day have fun with my children, even if they are grown. To do some of the things I would like to have done with them when they were young, but that for reasons beyond my control and theirs, we did not. To one day be able to take them on a great vacation and have fun with them, free of the worry about what shoe might possibly drop next.

Erin’s desire to go back to that place and time gives me hope that both she and her brother did have childhoods that they will cherish as they grow older. Maybe it’s the *mother guilt* that I suffer periodically from that colors my perception of what their childhood was like?

For now I’m just going to enjoy watching these young men playing with their children and hope that one day, my adult children will be on a beach somewhere, playing with theirs, and that their children…my grandchildren, will have a grandmother who has learned how to laugh and have fun and play. (Let me just add here though, I am not in any rush to become a grandmother!)