(zhwaduh vee-vruh) French. 1. A delight in being alive; keen carefree enjoyment of living.
I was walking along a beach in Clearwater Beach Florida, watching my friend Lisa as she examined the offerings from the ocean. It was not the first time that I have been on that march by the sea with her, a staple of her Saturday morning routine. She stopped to examine shells, seaweed and crabs, and when she found life in the detritus, she whirled and threw it back into the sea. As we walked, she told me the story of the seagull.
She was on her Saturday morning walk on a blustery day. Ahead of her she noticed a seagull hunkered down in the sand. As she strode briskly along the beach, she kicked a string of fisherman’s monofilament line. That kick made the seagull jerk, and she realized that the bird had become entangled in “yards and yards” of monofilament, and had settled onto the beach, hungry, exhausted and dying.
My friend volunteers at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, which is home to Winter, the dolphin who lost her tail to a similar unfortunate encounter with the leavings of man. Winter had become entangled in a crab trap line, lost circulation to her tail flukes and subsequently, her tail. She lives at the aquarium, thriving on the gift of a prosthetic tail. I’m sure that the story of Winter’s entrapment and recovery contributed, in part, toward my friend’s efforts to save the seagull.
“I took it up to the lifeguard’s station,” she said, “and (one of them) helped me to partially untangle it.” Some of the line had become buried under the skin of the bird, an indication of how long it had been wrapped in misery. They called an animal rescue hospital, which took the bird. “I don’t know what happened to it; I need to call and find out.”
Lisa’s effort to save the seagull is illustrative of her engagement with her living environment. She has two small birds — a Quaker parrot and a mustached parakeet — both of which were rescued from some loss or abandonment. Lisa has a lust for life, is excited about the possibilities of joy inherent in our interactions with people, places and things. And birds, beasts and beauties of the sea.
Lisa shares something with my mother, whom she met when both attended a baby shower given for me by my two best friends. In her later years, my mother traveled the world as often as she was able. She would quietly tell me of the many countries she had visited on a trip to an Army base in Germany sponsored by my niece. She loved to recount her “AARP discount” travels and cruises. Lisa lived in China for six months, immersed in its culture and traditions. She brought home the culinary delights of the Chinese, and delivered them to my friends when she cooked and catered my 50th birthday party. She hops on planes to visit her friends in Indiana, and goes on blind adventures to the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina.
There is something invigorating about being in the company of someone so delighted by life and so interested in the joys possible in living. My mother and my friend, both plunged into thickets of pain — abuse, divorce, cancer and death — emerged with a commitment to find a way to joy, to celebrate an existence that, though scarred, was still meaningful. The two of them share another thing important to me: they were both born on the same date, a day that or me, embodies the “keen, carefree enjoyment of living.”