Winter Seagulls

I am fortunate to have a job. I am lucky to have an office rather than a cubicle. I am blessed to have a window that is not sealed shut. The best thing about my workspace is that sometimes, when it is quiet, I can hear the call of seagulls outside my window; a novelty that has yet to lose its charm.

I'm not a beach person and the sound of the seagull does not tug at the memory of days wiled away at the seashore. To me, the seagull’s song is both foreign and familiar. I've spent the past six or so years landlocked and I've recently returned to the home of my Alma Mater on the shores of Lake Erie. Seagulls were all over the place back in my college days as they are today. But since I didn't grow up near the shore, seagull song reminds me more of my movie-memories of the beach: pirates, castaways, thoughtful reflection that leads to action, and seaweed-entwined lovers.

I loathe the actual beach, but I love experiencing the beach virtually in literature and film. The imagined smell of the salt air, the breeze, the waves wetting my feet, and the call of the seagull; these things live in the ideal of my memory, free of the grit and smell of a real beach. Because most of my memories of the seashore are rooted in fantasy, hearing a seagull calling while I am at my desk feels somehow magical. It's almost as if I'm walking down the street and I see a unicorn nuzzling the lawn in front of my house or I’m driving past the wash-and-wax and catch a glimpse of the workers drying off a dragon. It is one of the intangible benefits of my job: magic in the mundane.