Talk about exercise!  Whew!  Early this morning as I clinically sliced and chomped my way through the first half of an English muffin greedily laden with butter and peanut butter, I hadn’t any idea of the physical trial that was to follow. Indeed afterwards, having rinsed my hands and brushed my teeth, I opted instead of tricycling to get the car washed. It was a reckoning of minutes under cover of the Spanish Moss along familiar winding pathways past the handsome horses in pasture and back home.  When at last I mounted my squeaky trike I hadn’t intended to accomplish anything more beneficial than a round about Lands End. But mischief and profit overtook me.  Soon I was sailing by Tower Beach Club.

I stopped on S Beach Lane to collect and pocket fresh rosemary on a stem (a discovery we made years ago). Next however was a glorious but hilly descent onto the beach. The sea breeze and dazzling sunshine beaconed! Regrettably it was high tide so there was but a thin avenue of passage adjacent the increasingly lavish tide water, the alternating rim of which I barely escaped before judiciously turning around.

This is when the unanticipated exercise unfolded. Getting an Atlas tricycle across the beach by hand, then up the sandy incline to the boardwalk and finally to the top of the boardwalk before the descent along the narrow concrete walkway to the road was a matter of utmost application.  Approaching 80 years of age is no ready catalyst for this kind of acclivitous undertaking! But my shame and honour were on the line! I felt it were more decorous to be found dead on this mountainous sandy windswept slope aside my abandoned trike than withering beneath a bedsheet in a remote poorly outfitted hospital room.

Everything today was in reverse. But my conclusion was gratifyingly square upon the deck in the flawless sunshine!

I have managed to rejuvenate myself in spite of my seeming reluctance this morning.  Ensuing telephone calls from family and our financial advisor’s subordinate have nicely punctuated the day. When the wind is right, tumbling over the grey cedar shacks on the rooftop of our cottage I heard the faint slaps of a pickleball in the faraway distance across the open field beyond Lands End    A launch passed discreetly by on the azure tidal cove.  I was redeemed.