This, from Birds reader and long-time friend Ellen Mendlow:

“Instead of standing on the shore convinced that the ocean cannot carry us, let us venture onto its waters, just to see.”
-P. Teilhard de Chardin

I
One day I went to tea and met a couple just celebrating their 1st year in a relationship. They’d met at work – he shy and she nervous and both coming off failed relationships. Celebrating a year in Cape May

II
Seconds after I took the sunset pictures a young couple approached breathlessly begging a photo of them…I was annoyed to be interrupted in my solitude. But the girl beamed “we’ve just been engaged” and I relented taking several pictures against this beautiful backdrop.  They literally had just pledged 15 minutes before…and had told no one.

III
That night, I woke suddenly from my sleep and though I should have stayed in bed I really, really felt I wanted to go to the shore, so in a half conscious stupor I got up and walked across Ocean Drive. Three doors down were some young folks having a party and they were also headed to the beach. Again I felt invaded in my peace (at 1:30 AM no less!)…but I followed a girl in a long white dress—she’d been married  that day and, still in her wedding gear, was headed with her party for a late night plunge in the ocean. I told her about the other couples I’d met and the sense of seeing the whole story (courtship, commitment, wedding) in one weekend…how I got up just in time to witness this  — she said it was the best story she’d heard and she regaled her wedding party with it all night.
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On November 22, 1963, I was hired by Peace Corps headquarters at Lafayette Square [in DC] and was shopping at Garfinkel’s when I heard that John Kennedy had been shot.  That death tore me out of the ‘50s and flung me into the ‘60s. 

Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver, a vestige of Kennedy glamour, once appeared in a white linen suit, tanned and gorgeous.  I worked for a moody Baptist minister, a Texan and friend of Bill Moyers.  Another Texan, Lyndon Johnson, was willing to lose the Dixiecrats to the Republicans because of his civil rights stand. While on a Peace Corps recruiting trip to the U. of Alabama, Gov. George Wallace gave a speech.  I happened to be standing at the door when he exited and extended his hand to me.  He had tried to stop integration at that same door the year before, and I refused to shake his hand.  He said, “You don’t like me very much, do you?”  Uppity women and blacks just didn’t seem to “know their place” anymore.
 
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