Living Large on Little: Part 3

And one more installation from my forthcoming mini book: Living Large on Little: How to See the Invitation in Limitation. This vignette is from the section on patience....

When I taught high school on a tiny, Micronesian island, far, far away, I learned to make weekends sacred. I tried to get out and enjoy the ocean, which was my favorite thing to do there. 

One Saturday morning, I stopped at the local outdoor market and bought a coconut to take to Wings Beach. With any luck, I’d have that northern nook of the island to myself. It was an  unprotected beach, as in: no coral reef to create a lagoon and keep the sharks out. I was always a bit afraid of swimming in those waters, and I would force myself to do it.

My car lurched down the pocked, coral road, and I arrived to—delight!—a deserted beach. 

I laid out my sarong on the sand and sipped the coconut juice through the straw sticking from the hole that the man at the market had machete’d open for me. When I finished the juice, I thought: I want to eat the coconut meat inside. But this was the entire coconut—thick, green outer casing and all.

Limitation: I had no machete. 

Invitation: How else can I open it?

I will not admit how long it took me to break that thing open. It involved much hefting and not a few rounds of bashing against rocks. I’m glad there were no witnesses but the coconut crabs, scuttling for cover. 

When I finally heard that shell crack in half, I felt an ancient thrill that no modern equipment of convenience can give. 

I sat on my sarong and scooped out the coconut meat. I ate it with revelry, facing the sea and sky in their many hues of blue. 

When I had scraped out the last of the sweet fruit, I stacked the two shells and ran my hands through the sand—sand that had once been stone or coral and was now soft enough to comfortably sit on. 

So much is worth waiting for. 

Sometimes, that waiting is passive, but many times, it’s a muscle’d waiting, filled with sweat and repetition like the tides. Or the sound of continuous thudding of coconut on stone. 

PS: The official book launch is November 9 at The Miners' Bazaar in Jacksonville, Oregon, from 5-7 PM.  More info here. 

*Living Large on Little is now available here.