Still Walking Forward

Today I almost didn’t write anything.

I couldn’t quite find my way through all the noise of social media in a way that felt like me;
or that offered you something real.
Something that actually matters in the middle of an ordinary day.

I had slipped into scrolling, something I seem to do when discouragement starts to creep in.
A way of distracting myself.
It never helps.

So instead, I pulled the ingredients together for a pot of soup.
I walked on the beach with the dogs
and noticed my feet, feeling grateful they have carried me for sixty-nine years
to a scene like this,
breathing in the clean winter air.

Nothing dramatic happened.
No big revelation.

Just this gentle reminder:
sometimes the bravest thing we do is invisible from the outside.

I had a customer at Mary’s Marvelous—Old Man Mahoney, we called him
(because we had three Pats and he was one of them).
His doctor gave him a prescription to sit at the beach every day
and stare at the horizon.
I never asked what that did for him. But I always remember it when I’m near the ocean.

Standing there myself now,
I wonder if it was simply this:
a reminder that life keeps unfolding in front of us, continuously renewing.

When I came home, I finished the soup—potato, celery, and zucchini with Parmesan—
and it felt comforting.
The perfect antidote to the day.

And as it happens, today brings two kinds of beginning:
Mardi Gras with its raucous brass and bold color,
and the Lunar New Year, offering long noodles, dumplings, citrus,
and the promise of luck and long life.

And maybe, after the stillness of the ocean,
a little brass and brightness
is exactly what I need—

Sometimes the bravest thing we do is invisible from the outside.
And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s even how we begin again—
still walking forward.

From my table to yours,
Mary