Benches
A stationary place to rest and reflect upon a single moment or a lifetime.
For all of my life, benches have been my most stable friends.
I have often sat on benches, thinking about life’s seminal moments or watching them unfold in real-time. From a quiet perch above the ocean or in a park, current matters can be overlayed on the tapestry of experience and resolved accordingly. Alone on a bench, words are unnecessary, self-talk is optional, but a conversation with God may be essential.
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Early benches
Like millions of kids all over America, I was a budding athlete from the moment I could tie my shoes. On dusty diamonds and in high school stadiums, I alternately spent more or less time on a bench—depending upon my fortunes as a player and whether the coach viewed me as an essential cog or a spare part. Trust me, there’s a world of difference in the thoughts thought upon the same bench by game-weary superstars and scout team subs.
Lost at sea
It was a warm Spring day in Southern California and I was embroiled in the age-old migration from work to home, slugging it out with all the other exhausted commuters on the 405 Freeway. On an impulse, I took the Jamboree exit, cut south to PCH, and finished the long drive adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the early evening afterglow. Traffic was thick, but proximity to the sea comforted me.
At Cliff Drive I dropped down to pass by Heisler Park in Laguna Beach, knowing full well that the choice couple of benches on the bluff would probably already be occupied by sunset watchers. But—low and behold—the choicest of benches was empty! I parked quickly, deposited coins in the meter, and anxiously hoofed it toward my objective. I smiled as I took my place on the glorious wood-slatted throne a hundred feet above Diver’s Cove.
A whale of a time
As I sat silently decompressing from another action-packed workday, I noticed a longboarder paddling past the shore break. After a time, some 300 yards from shore, he ceased his stroke. Straddling the board he maneuvered the nose due south on the compass point. There he bobbed up and down gently on the golden swells slowly rolling toward the shore before a glorious California sunset.
It was not lost on me that he had his own bench made of fiberglass, upon which he was involved in a quiet pursuit of sanity or beauty—or both. As I watched from my bench, puffs of mist erupted from the water surrounding his bench. In an instant, I understood the payoff for his paddling: A chance to become part of the migration of Humpback Whales moving slowly northward from their breeding grounds in the waters off of Mexico.
I watched him upon his bench, and his huge friends gliding by, fascinated.
Later benches
I have always been a loner, mostly quiet and self-contained. As a kid, I often made up games and dove deeply into the solitude of them. I’d love to say that this made me a “great thinker,” but the truth is less lofty. The endgame for introverts is to be misunderstood (“he’s so standoffish”) and consequently viewed as “less friendly.” But, in the words of the inimitable Popeye, “I yam what I yam!”
But that’s not all that I yam.
Throughout our marriage, my wife, Vicki, has helped me grow more personable and capable of socially acceptable interactions. Sure, I was already learning these skills of necessity in the “grownup world” of work and career building. Still, my constitution requires periods of solitude to clear the decks of the mental flotsam and jetsom that accumulate over time.
And a quiet bench in solitude is one of the best places to talk with God. A pew with a view, as it were.
The Captain’s Prow
On the roof of the Nature Center at the top of Back Bay in Newport Beach, there is a lone bench facing south toward the bay where the concrete roof comes to a point. The safety rail comprises posts with braided steel wire—mimicking the guard rails on a sailing vessel. Cumulatively, I sat on this particular bench for a month of lunchtimes, chewing on work problems or personal matters.
I dubbed this spot The Captain’s Prow. Often during my lunchtime visits, I would rise from the bench and perch myself on the very pinnacle of the roof, hands on the rail, surveying the bay like Captain Cook, and intermittently pleading with my God for answers. Or healing. Or deliverance.
Lunchtime over, I would scoot back to the office, on my way to pounding out 38+ years before the proverbial mast and greatly anticipating the final docking of my career—which, for those of you still commiserating or dreaming on your particular benches, eventually did come.
Far-flung benches
Vicki and I have enjoyed transitioning from always working to working when we please, a process I have dubbed #Refocusing (as opposed to #Retiring). But Refocusing has not been without adjustments. For example, my wife had to take me aside one day and remind me that every project on our acre in the Blue Ridge does not have to be approached like a PROJECT at work. Planting a couple of flats of new flowers does not require the same manic focus as, say, a website redesign done for a major Insurance concern in my past.
Maxim: If it doesn’t get planted today, tomorrow—or the next day—will be fine.
Because we might decide to hop in the car and drive away for weeks!
The bench featured in this story sits atop a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean on the Marginal Way (pedestrian path) between Ogunquit and Perkins Cove, Maine. It is a decidedly beautiful place and we sampled this and many other benches along that coastline only recently.
Which means I must be growing, for I sat on these benches on the coast of Maine with my Princess, Vicki, and we enjoyed the solitude together.
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