Early Saturday morning, I grabbed my coffee and headed for the beach. Despite defeating the purpose of sunrise rituals, I closed my eyes as I settled into my spot not far from shore. My eyes opened as I felt a body next to me.
“Thought I’d find you here,” a familiar female voice said.
Those were words I wanted to hear, but not exactly the person I wanted to hear them from.
“Hey, Sarah,” I said as she plopped into the sand next to me. “Were you looking for me?”
“Well, not exactly. I was out for my morning run, and I know you usually come down here for the sunrise,” she said, looking at the horizon. “Fascinating habit.”
I nodded and focused on the lines I was engraving into the sand. I felt her glance at what I was doing then turn her head back to the horizon.
“You know, I’d never admit this to anyone, but I didn’t always like kids.”
My expression went blank. I looked at her and waited.
“Twelve years ago, I knocked on Mr. Myers’s office door with a sales pitch for personalized pens.”
I burst laughing and quickly stopped myself, out of eagerness to hear more.
Sarah just smiled and continued. “It was the third year in a row I’d done that, and every year, Tom would say ‘no thank you’ and closed the door. Then one year, he said, ‘You do remember coming here last year and the year before and me telling you we don’t need them, don’t you?’” She looked down and laughed at the memory. “And I said, ‘I do, sir, but I also remember my mother telling me to never give up, and I have a feeling, Mr. Myers, that one day you’ll ask me to put you down for four boxes.’”
“So, what did he say.”
“He stood from his chair and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, put me down for one box now, and I would like to offer you a summer job here just until camp is over, and you can still sell your fancy pens on the side. If you get through more than two pens until the end of the summer, I’ll buy ten more.’”
“Wow. I guess you took his offer.”
“Yep. I thought, hey, make some extra cash for the summer and sell eleven boxes in the meantime? Great!”
“So did you get through the first box of pens?”
“I barely used my first one three times. We use pencils for checklists and attendance, the computer for schedules, posting payments—and, well, most everything else.
“So no more boxes?”
She smiled. “I would have considered him a fool to have bought even one more out of pity.” She shook her head, laughing. “No, he was happy with my work and asked me to come back the following summer. Eventually, I started doing more of the planning and decision making that he decided to sit out on most summers. Mrs. Myers would still come for her music sessions twice a week.”
I listened and nodded through the rest of her story. When she was done, I went back to letting the sand fall through my fingers, absently hoping to find a small seashell.
She watched me for a moment. “It’s not knowing what you’re looking for, Amy. It’s the fact that you showed up to find it. No matter where you go or how many wrong turns you take, you’ll always end up exactly where you belong.”
“I don’t think I really know where that is, Sarah,” I said, biting the inside of my lip.
“I think you do.”
I shrugged. “Thanks.” I forced a smile for her, knowing she meant well with her unintelligible advice. “What about you? Did you ever find what you were looking for? Where you belong?”
“I did. This camp is my life, Amy.” She looked out into the half-risen pink sun, her words drifting. “I don’t know where I’d be without it.”
I glanced at her, frowning at her words. She seemed to have gone to a distant place in her head. Then my expression turned thoughtful when I saw the way she was looking out at the sunrise. It was with the same hopeful trust that the new day would come through for her in some way.
I walked back thinking about what Sarah had said. Why would she think that I knew what I wanted? Did she think I belonged here? What did I want? I closed my eyes, and the first vision that came to my head was junior year of high school. I had just been called up to my art teacher’s desk.
Mrs. Venner was a strict teacher, even for an art class. She had that critical expression on her face before she would even look at a piece. And her grading made our faces look a lot like hers. Her grades rarely went over 92 percent, un-less our pieces were exceptionally detailed. Once, there was a 99.9 percent for a kid who designed an entire mansion-sized bathroom out of carved soap.
It was the best thing ever created—in her classroom. She never gave out 100s, since in her eyes, no one’s work was ever 100 percent, not even her own.
That was until she gave her first 100 percent grade ever—on my three-dimensional cartoon painting. I thought I was seeing things. But there it was, all three digits on the back of my art project. I looked up at her, and she smiled at me—another first for Mrs. Venner.
