This Ocean

Visiting my parents and family this past summer I spent some time walking our old beach. For the past 43 years I seem to have covered a good portion of this particular shoreline … beach that I am now beginning to realize knows just as much about me as I do it. And I am caught right now in a funny place — searching  ardently for someone to just simply know me.  Now, don’t worry this is not some schmaltzy  poignant memory focusing on nostalgic childhood spots or those watershed moments that sculpted me, but rather a quiet, strong understanding. I can recognize the dips and curves of our beach … where the sand bar appears, and the gully. How to avoid the jetty and its draw, that odd current it creates if you get too close.

This ocean: I have been in it every summer since I was born. Water that has held me at every turn, and I always seem to find myself back in its comfort. Maybe I think that swimming in the ocean, this ocean will make me less damaged. That the salt and sand will swirl up around me as I cut through the surf and heal me. Silly, right? I am still amazed at my need for this sea. This overwhelming connection to just jump in … somehow I know it will catch me. I should stand at the shoreline with the other mothers watching my sons as they swim and jump, and ride waves. But it just doesn’t fit, so I run after them.

The water is cold, strong and moving. To feel the current pulling slightly on my thighs as I leap in and under, reminds me to stand up again and push against it. The boys go zipping past me on boogie boards squealing in delight that I am actually in and can swim right next to them. My tiny nephew dances on the beach between his mother and grandmother. He waves from time to time to me and tries to shout my name, but it dissolves in the surf. My brother stands with his Raybans on and his arms crossed in this same triangle never taking his eyes off the water. Trained Jersey lifeguard that he is … his muscle memory kicks in. I can almost hear him out loud tracking all our boys in the ocean and making sure all heads are above water. The lifeguard in the stand gives him a subtle nod of the head, more or less saying ‘Dude, no worries, I sense you are on this; all’s cool’ — lifeguard family royalty will get you far in this town. My father sits in his high blue beach chair holding court and never taking his steady green gaze off the ocean. I can see it from where I am out in the waves… as if he can quiet the waters in some Poseidon like calm for all of us.

All I need is my wide-brimmed sunhat, Chapstick and absolutely no flip-flops. An ease washes over me – something I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I would love to bottle it and spritz it all over me like a perfume. I focus on the smell of the tide and late afternoon sun skimming the water lightly at first and then spreading out vast, quiet and strong.

The grown-up in me prevails and I must pack up and head home. As we load ourselves into the car, I consciously decide not to rinse the salt and sand from my hair. I want it to whip around my face in the wind as we go over the bridge leaving the island — slightly wild and unkempt, little bit of a salute to my youth. The boys have melted into a morphed pile of sunburned faces and beach towels — their heads collapsing in the middle seat slightly touching one another. Exhausted and content.

Two hours later we split fried shrimp and a lobster roll watching our murmuring  harbor at home, discussing jellyfish and shark week on the Discovery Channel. They pepper me with ‘Would you rather swim into a swarm of Portuguese Man of War or get attacked by a shark?’  A heated debate ensues. We then wind into a long conversation about whether all white jellyfish are non stinging. ‘Had I ever been stung? Where? How old was I? How terrible did it feel? What could I liken it to? Was it as bad as a bee sting?  Rate the pain on a scale of one to ten.’   We three end the night by walking  through Marine Park spotting jellyfish with long, translucent tentacles in the river and watching the crabbers pull up their snapping cages.  As we make our way back to the car, I notice the tops of the boys’ heads are framed in this exquisite halo of blazing, orange light from the sunset dropping slowly into the river. I couldn’t see it, but I’ m sure my own head was included in their light.

What heals? Salt. Ocean. Time. People. Sunsets. Hard work. No work. Writing. Laughing. Friends. Red wine. Prayer. Sobbing. New love. Solitude. Sitting quietly. Movement. What is IT? Not one particular thing, I suppose. No magic pill, no one specific incantation, or potion. Perhaps a combination of them all?  The willingness to heal, the want to heal … is that at the crux? Is that the shift, the vital shift towards feeling some connection and safety again?

A Storm

It is 4:02 am and I am up. So here it is, the Tropical Depression.  Troptober they say. Finally.  We waited all day yesterday for it.  Nothing.  Even last night it was sticky and quiet, and no sign of it. I sat on the porch looking and waiting.  Nothing, not even a change in the smell of the air.  No ruffle of wind, no thickening of clouds.   It felt odd to me, something was coming, brewing, but I had to stop waiting for it … to stop looking for it.  It would either come or not. I love that the Weather Channel describes this storm as a person: they name it and talk about her change in character and nature.  A guest about to arrive?  A child about to have a tantrum? No one knows.

Her wind blew me out of my bed.  Literally. The sheets of rain were LOUD and heavy, even a bit unforgiving.  I tried to go back to sleep but nothing arrived.  I figured I needed to get up … something was compelling me to watch this, take note.  She arrives so forcibly – how could I not greet her?  She was impossible to ignore.  (That would also be rude!)

As I swing by feet out of bed, I know that I am headed at some point today down the street to collect various window screens that the wind is prying off the house – maybe even a bit of wading into the river if they drifted that far. My room is encased in windows.  I roll up every single one of my shades and watch.  The torrents of rain are so heavy and fast that I can barely see familiar shapes outside. Our Crape Myrtle tree by the mailbox and the swing set are huge blobs of shadow.  My whole room is reflected out into the night.  Sitting in my chair I can see the whole room replicated in the reflection of the glass.  The rain is now a steady stream giving this reflection some clarity; the picture is a bit sharper to me.   I can see it all in the storm: my alarm clock, my stack of books on my night table, a tea-cup, a clumsy pile of shoes in the corner  — even me in my chair! I wave to myself just to make sure I am seeing it all correctly.  Fondly, I wave back.

I keep thinking that the lull of rain and wind should make me sleepy.  No dice.  There is still too much noise.  The gutters are gushing with rain water and the wind though tamed a bit is still a steady braying.  Now I hear the sirens.  An ambulance or a fire truck, I am not sure which, races towards Sea Bright.  The scream comes rushing up into my ears and then fades back again. It moves me to “check on” things. I run down the hall to make sure that the leak in Harry’s room has not started up again … and that window near the bookcases  that leaked like a sieve over the summer is tight still.  The boys are untouched by it all. They are still tight in their cocoons.

But then my alarm starts to quietly flash — a light blinks for 30 seconds before the blaring buzzer begins.  It is my subtle nudge to start the day.  It is time to get up.  Again.   Now, it’s time to go out into the rain and share it with the rest of the world.  It is time to move and no longer observe.  Time to well, basically get wet.

The Heat

The heat. The heat. The heat. (I mean, come on … what else is there right now?)

I must be submerged in a large body of water all day long. Walking across a sidewalk and boardwalk with no shoes burns the bottoms of my feet. I find myself jumping, twisting and leaping from shadow to shadow cast by the lawn chairs just to get to the edge of the pool. The glare from the sun is blinding and overwhelming. Recklessly, I just dive right in … I might even be fully clothed, who cares? I can’t seem to get away from the heat fast enough! Diving into the pool with my sunglasses on, I have lost them 3 times already. The children dive below and scour the bottom of the pool for them … a seek-and-retrieve mission that seems to keep us all happy and busy for a while.

More heat. More humidity. No pause from it. Like a battle. Must stay outside. Don’t go in. Don’t cave. Be strong. You can do it. It’s summer for crying out loud, who sits inside? The feeble, the weak … the ones who can’t hack the heat. The smart ones sit inside. That’s who.

The boys are completely unaffected. They move like African gazelle with an abounding grace and alacrity.  They leap, and jump across searing miles of sand as if it was as cool and comfortable as a day in May. They argue with me about the “You Promised Us” a Running Bases game in the sand. I must do it. I HAVE to do it. I rearrange the game so that one base is in the middle of the ocean … I cover THIS base.  Solutions are out there, you just have to be literally standing in them in order to see it.

It is hard to imagine snow, rain or cold of any kind. My mind is racing to remember it all  — it might help deaden the brain sizzle that is happening to me right now. I cannot seem to muster it.

The freezing waters of the Atlantic erase it all … swooshing waves cover me completely. I can feel my hair spreading out behind me like a vast swag of seaweed, tangled all over the place and then smooth again as soon as a wave pulls me under. Harry and I dive in front of one another, crossing waves just as they break. He is a flash of red bathing suit and blond, and I can hear him laughing loudly at the ocean. Danny is jumping closer to shore … telling me to turn around – to catch him — so he can swim out to me. I think he is even clutching a tennis ball in his right hand, ready for a game at all times. We practice riding waves in, judging and critiquing each wave on where and when it is about to break, and then to get out in front of it FAST and then stretch your body out like a surfboard – stay ahead of it, I yell as they squirm away from me and try to ride it all the way to the edge of the lifeguard stand.

Finally, the boys pause … wouldn’t actually call it done … just pausing. We roll up onto the beach and sit with our legs stretched out in front of us and let the little, quiet waves roll up and over us. Leaning back on our arms, we  just sit for a minute finally cooled from head to toe.  Danny recommends a dribble castle. And so it starts: good placement so the castle doesn’t get swept out to sea with the first wave, but close enough to get the right amount of necessary dribble water. The moat, the base for the castle and then the long, twisting, Gothic dribbles begin. I am grateful for this day, this place, this ocean, even the damn heat that has driven us all to this moment. It is good, it is simple and it is mine … even with my sunglasses sitting on the floor of the ocean