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I’ve peered over the edge of life at death, wobbling between the known and the unknown.

In my early 40s a cancer diagnosis dropped out of the sky and knocked me into a year of surgery, chemo and radiation. My heart carried the weight of the surgeon’s words, “I’m so sorry – this is a very bleak prognosis.” I couldn’t see a place for my plans or my hopes.

Still, I kept living. The chemo nurses, the oncologist, the radiologist all told me stories of patients who survived and surprised them. They were brave enough to look me in the eye and believe. My counselor, my friends, family and colleagues surrounded me with encouragement, optimism and grace along with a generous helping of realism. Gradually I let go of the heavy prognosis and reached for Emily Dickinson’s  “thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” The little bird of hope warmed my battered spirit and relit my eyes.

Nearly two decades later, I see every sunrise as a small piece of the future, gifted to me – the surprising survivor.

I’m posting photos of the beach because it’s one of my favorite places. It is so alive. The sand is different every day. The wind keeps me guessing. The water is every shade of blue and green, ever swirling back and forth. Gulls plead and bicker and huddle and hunt. Slashes of seaweed arrive with the tide. Fog slinks along abruptly engulfing huge crags of rock in a cascade of grey cotton. No wonder that on my last trip, when I took these photos, I looked out along the shore and saw a lone walker suddenly start clapping and jumping and laughing into the blustering gusts. It was a classic case of beach overdose.

The beach entreats my lungs to breathe deeply and feel her salty spirit. To remember that every day is a new birthing of time. For me, it is a place of restoration, to refresh my little bird. A place to be alive.

I’m a rain enthusiast. Not a die-hard, in-your-face fan because there is such a thing as too much rain. More of a devotee of the finer features of rain. It probably comes of growing up in the Pacific Northwest in Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., and then living in both Portland, Ore., and the Seattle area. Most of us here understand the nourishing role of rain and all it does for our outdoor living rooms. Matt Love, an Oregon author, wrote a quirky, meandering little book entitled Of Walking in Rain. Naturally I bought it and splashed along with his writings, mostly based on life along the Oregon coast where the rain is prodigious and ubiquitous. Reading about rain or walking in it are what devotees of rain are apt to do when they are not perusing catalogues of rain-repellant and waterproof clothing and hats while sipping a hot drink.

Anthony Doerr writes in his memoir about his first storm in Rome when “the lightning lashes the domes of churches” and “hail clatters on the terrace.” After the onslaught, he notices what I do during my visit. “In the early morning, the air seems shinier and purer than I’ve seen it.” I suppose it’s the drama of rainstorms that appeals to my writer’s heart, bringing the humidity to a climax while the serene aftermath becomes a glowing denouement.

Rome offered me its own stormy rain encounters. Like the city, rain is a full-immersion experience. The rain performance is usually supported by two reliable character actors. The distant voice of thunder rumbling its complaints to the mountains. Lightning stabs the air with flashy whispers, startling the sky wide open. Then, flowing onstage, water descends from cloud to street, thundering along in its own running of the bulls along the cobblestones.

What I love the best is the Roman sky after the rain, a glimmering, glorious, fresh-washed blue still fraught with clouds of all hues from white to black. Standing in the lane I watch as the sun reappears and wakes the dark, wet stone. The air somehow sounds clean.

(Feature photo at top: Storm clouds gathering over Rome, as seen from Frascati.)