STARRY NIGHTS ✧ STARRY-EYED DAYS
STARRY NIGHTS ✧ STARRY-EYED DAYS
What is it about laying on my back gazing up into the brilliant , starry island night sky watching for falling stars that makes me feel incredibly young and incredibly ancient all at the same time ? Far from city-bred light pollution , our stars are so visibly bigger and brighter , sprinkled as they are high above the stillness of a flat-calm Bogue Sound or the rolling , white-foamed and midnight-blue waves receding on the oceanside beach . The moon rises from the east but over the Atlantic Ocean , adding her reflection to the night aura . Tiny baby sea turtles are drawn to the luminous ocean as they emerge sand-sprinkled from their nest near the dune to make their first tentative crawl to the sea .
I have raised three island-bred children and have welcomed three grandsons and two granddaughters and soon will welcome two more . Each of my ocean children love the salty joy of hours spent in the waves or on a rustic sound-side dock with fishing pole in hand , cast net ever ready to capture bait or small shrimp . Although Pokémon GO walks have temporarily replaced our traditional flashlight crab walks down the beach at night with our procession of siblings and cousins ages 6 months to 16 years , I know that one day , they too will hold the tiny hands of their first-born children and teach them all the ocean lore passed down from each generation of our beach-loving family . I know you are a beach lover too and your friends and family enjoy special rituals and traditions each time you
get away for those magical few days to your favorite island home .
Our early family beach photographs were mostly shot by my father using his newspaperman ’ s camera , a Rolleiflex from the 1960s . He gave me my first 35mm camera when I was 15 and I reveled in taking photos of my friends , sunrises , my surfing boyfriend ( now husband ), then later my babies on the beach , and now my tiniest and newest granddaughter on our dock one steamy , dusky July evening with a curtain of marsh grass as her backdrop . The rite of passage today for our older grandchildren is their first phone ; no cumbersome lenses and 35mm cameras for them . With dragonfly speed , their phones come out , they lean in , then away , and grin as the oldest snaps a selfie and they have captured that precious moment in time , smallest to tallest , on a perfectly brilliant late-summer day . Stars of their own vacation photos and videos , starry-eyed with the pure essence of a childhood blessed by cousins and memories being made on these long beach days on Emerald Isle .
Julia Bat ten Wax