Creola's Moonbeam Read Online Free PDF Page B

bring down the house at our lunches. Now those same giggling girlfriends of mine, well into our maturity, tend to purchase more gentle reminders of the passing years; cards with pastoral scenes, cute little animals, vows of friendship, and birds. Birds ! Cardinals, wrens, bluebirds, robins and chickadees. Birds and the love of birds is a dead giveaway that a girl is far, far from her girlhood!
    This year, Pam’s card for me featured an entire flock of red birds.
    I gulped my diet drink with the bravado of a cowboy in an old-time episode of Gunsmoke throwing back a hearty swig of sarsaparilla. Unlike the cowboys at Miss Kitty’s saloon, however, I got choked. I spat and coughed as cola spewed from my nose. Covered with the sticky substance, I looked around to see if anyone were watching. A woman had been walking toward me, but quickly turned around and headed off in the opposite direction. I assumed she was being kind.
    I waded into the surf to rinse off. It was still too early in the season for this cold-natured gal to swim, but the splashes of water refreshed me. I made footprints in the cool, wet sand as busy little sandpipers scampered around adding their miniature pricks near my feet’s outlines. Securing my hat, and with the breeze at my back, I started up the beach for my daily constitutional. The Gulf glistened a brilliant gold in the morning’s sunlight.
    I watched the seagulls and pelicans as they windsurfed effortlessly over the water in search of prey. Spotting small fish, the birds would dive in and sail up with a tasty breakfast gripped in their bills.
    “It’s easy for you birds.” I called. “You have no diets to observe, no meals to cook, and no dishes to wash!”
    A pelican dived in for his fish.
    Pelicans occupy a special place in my heart. I see them as exclusively male, strong, determined, and dependable. To me they are exactly like Beau. Though my own pelican is clearly more handsome than the bird variety, there was something oddly familiar in the eyes of one pelican I was able to observe up close. In the bird world, that pelican was the closest thing to the man of my life emulating his expression, his personality, his friendliness, and his resolve to eat well.
    “Enjoy your morning’s feast, Beau, my love!”
    The sun had been up just long enough for the heat to begin to steam. I considered turning back but urged myself to keep moving for the sake of exercise, demon exercise. In the distance, I spotted the familiar form of a woman, one who walked at the same time as me each morning.
    There was nothing of a pelican’s look about the woman. She reminded me more of a crane. Tall and skinny with thighs the same size as her calves, the crane-like woman almost appeared to be walking on stilts. She looked to be in her late seventies or possibly in her early eighties. Dressed in white, her gray-streaked blond hair was topped with a Styrofoam safari hat. The woman was monochromatic with the exception of hot pink sunglasses.
    I sighed. “Everyone is starting to look like birds to me,” I told the pelicans. “Not only am I talking with birds, but I’m also comparing other humans to water fowl. I’d best initiate some human contact, and soon!”
    Following traditional beach etiquette, the woman and I had begun by nodding greetings to each other for a couple of weeks. Our polite nods next became hearty “Good mornings!” and had now progressed to the point where I actively looked for her each day.
    This day something else happened. The birdlike walker stopped some fifty feet down the beach and turned a cartwheel. For a split second, I feared she had taken a fall. I rushed to her aid.
    She sprang to her feet and threw her arms in the air as if she’d scored a touchdown. “I have grand and marvelous news on this glorious morning!”
    I halted, looking around to see if this rather strange exhibition had been for another person. No, the large bird was definitely performing for me . Now rethinking my