Last week I celebrated a birthday. It was one of THOSE birthdays, you know, the ones that make you realize that yes, you may feel physically good and not old but the rest of the world now recognizes that you are old.
Karl and I adopted a low key approach to birthdays after our marriage. In the beginning it involved an expensive meal and drinks at a nice restaurant. Then it evolved into making a special meal for each other at home as our corporate careers involved eating out a lot, then back to restaurants when we became self-employed/semi-retired, and starting last year back to the special meal at home again just because we enjoyed it more.
This year I wanted different, I wanted to spend an early morning on the beach having breakfast and enjoying the quiet, the scenery, and just us. We made some breakfast sandwiches the night before. We woke the next morning to cool air and low humidity, a treat as we waver between that and summer like weather during October. We heated up our breakfast and packed it in a thermal carrier, filled a thermos with hot coffee, and drove off to a local beach. At 7:30 a.m. we shared the beach area with one photographer, two birders, one sleepy looking park employee cleaning up, many shorebirds, a boat in the distance with the moon still up and the sun rising.
Breakfast on the beach provided a special start to the day, and to the next year of my life. Karl still cooked that special dinner for me, and I am a year older, but eating a picnic breakfast together while watching the shore, popping up to check out a bird or take a photograph, that was really magical.
Nichter Photography PLUS 