I was sitting quietly on the beach with Maria Tuesday, the sun was just coming out. I was reading a mystery by Martha Grimes, Maria had gotten up to study the drawings the tide had made in the sand.

I was dozing on and off, we both had been so tired, it was very sweet to just be relaxing,  sitting on the beach, even on a cloudy and windy day. Suddenly Maria turned to me and she has a serious, purposeful look on her face.

I was dressed as I always am dressed, shoes, socks, jeans, blue denim work shirt, a cap to keep the sun off my head, camera nearby. I don’t care for the beach in summer, I feel like a lobster sitting baking in the sun, I’ve never liked it much, although I love the ocean very much.

Maria is an elf, she loves to walk barefoot, sit naked in the moonlight, talk to the trees in the forest, and the birds and the bugs.

And her idea of relaxing is somewhat different from mine. It means a half dozen walks to the beach, two or three drives out to explore and look for lunch and an hour or two of reading in between. Our trip was pretty relaxing, but we always relax in our own way.

On the beach that windy afternoon, something was up. She turned suddenly came straight over to me with great purpose, she sat down on her chair next to me and looked me in the eyes, it was clear she had something important to tell me.

I couldn’t imagine what. But it was serious, she looked especially determined, a look I have come to respect, even fear.

In my happy life with Maria, I often hear things I never thought I would hear – sudden stories of beavers and their testicles, the emotional lives of an octopus,  observations about the stars and the dinosaurs, the interior lives of donkeys and chickens,  questions about the nature of the universe, sex, food and discourses about the different types of seaweed there are in the world.

Maria is an interesting person, she was different, her mother sometimes concedes, and I am sure she was not like the other children.  She is not like anybody and I love that about her. I think her  uniqueness is what i love the most about her, in fact.

Still, she surprised me by announcing with great seriousness of purpose that she had just received a message.

Lord, I thought, what kind of message could she have possibly been getting walking in the tide? Was she talking to seagulls, or perhaps a random passing seal? Or maybe even the seaweed itself, she just read a whole book about seaweed.

The thing was, I could tell from the way she was looking at me that the message was about me, and that whatever it was, I would end up doing something I didn’t want to do. She was bracing for a battle.

What, I said with some trepidation, was the message?

“It was from your feet,” she said.

“My feet?,” I said a bit at a loss for words.

“Yes, your feet!,” she said firmly and with authority.

She was very serious, she was looking straight into my eyes in the way only a half German, half Sicilian person can do.

I quickly went over in my mind the various things my feet might be talking to Maria about, none of them seemed good. I had little time.

I had not expected Maria to be chatting with my feet, they were happy and dry and safe in my shoes, where I wished to keep them and keep on reading my book. But there was only one thing I could do.

“What was the message?,” I said, fearfully.

“The message is “we want out of those shoes! We want to feel the silky water, the smooth sand, the salt air! We want to get out of those shoes!”

The message was very specific, and for all I knew, it sounded just like my feet.

I sputtered for a bit, I knew it was a losing battle. But my fee are happy in these shoes, I complained. It’s cold out there, I whined, and rocky, and I’ll get my pants wet. Maria shook her head, and said “your feet want to get out of those shoes. They told me!”

I knew eve as I fussed about my feet that I sounded like an old man, or as bad, an old lady. And honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time my feet felt beach sand and ocean water beneath them. I think I knew they would like it.

Maybe my feet did want to get out of my shoes. And how would I really know? They didn’t talk to me.

I could stretch this story out for a bit, but why waste your time or mine? I knew the shoes would come off, and just out of pride, I protested a little bit. In four or five minutes, my shoes and socks were off, my feet were walking in the water, my pants were getting wet.

And my feet did seem happy, I can’t deny it.

The sand was silky and smooth and liberating, it did feel good, the water was actually warm and soothing. I am grateful to be loved by someone who talks to my feet and worry about them. We walked up and down the beach several times.

Yes, I kept saying, it does feel silky and smooth.

Even I don’t worry about my feet.

My first marriage lasted 35 years, to a good person, and if at any point she had come up to me and told me my feet had been talking to her, I would have fallen over in a dead swoon. Life is quite a trip if you are willing to really take it.

As I walked back to our cottage and I showered and put dry socks on, I was glad that for the very first time in my many years on the earth that someone I love got a message from my feet.

My life these days is very much about opening up to new experience. I hate fussing, and will resist old fartism to the end. Living with Maria, I don’t think it would even be allowed.

You don’t hear every day that your feet are talking to somebody.

Or maybe ever again.