Write what you know. (2013?)

I know about the ocean. About the cold that you have to push yourself into. About the ache in your chest if you haven’t eaten. About the shoes you wear to protect yourself against the rocky floor—against predators both imaginary and real. Against the truth of what is beneath you. You wear the shoes so that you don’t know, because not knowing what you’re actually stepping on helps to numb the fear.

I know about distance. How you set yourself goals to swim to and you realize you’re much more out of shape than you’d assumed. How distance is deceptive and sound carries in strange ways. How voices that echo as if around the corner may actually be miles away. “That’s a rain train”, my grandmother would say—when the sound carried so close you knew it was likely to rain soon. And if you’re underwater, it is impossible to tell in which direction sound is coming from.

I know about jellyfish—that if you catch them on their supple back you can avoid the stings, and that you can build rock enclosures for them, but you have to remember about the tide. When I was eight I accidentally executed fourteen jellyfish this way. They never even had a trial. I’d forgotten about the tide.

Nothing but change is guaranteed. The tide always comes in and it always leaves. This I know. I know that each summer I tried to pin down moments to last forever, but that I couldn’t stop my grandparents from aging. Their wrinkles multiplied and their backs arched in increasing curves and their movements slowed. But they were still themselves.

Things we do to numb us from feeling. Why do we want to numb ourselves? What is it we’re afraid of?

I always wanted to go skinny dipping in the ocean but was too afraid to leave my bed at the right time. It was too dark, too dangerous and too lonely. Too unknown.

I keep wanting to write about the ocean but I know it doesn’t make for a very captivating story.

I could write about one great-grandfather drowning in the ocean and another great-grandfather whose life changed dramatically after he crossed it. I could write about the first time I heard the word “shit” (my dad stepped on a starfish that my brother and sister had left out to dry) or about nearly drowning with my mom in Hawaii. We clung on to our rented boogie board and felt huge waves pummel us into the sand, but when we finally rose to the surface we both looked at each other and saw mirrored exhilaration.

I could write about the salt tears that flowed down my face while my mom and I watched a sad movie about C.S. Lewis losing his wife, and my mom turned to me on the bed and said, “I love you so much honey, I want you to know that” and she hugged me tightly and we both cried even harder, because we knew we weren’t crying about C.S. Lewis’s wife, we were really crying about Dad and Jessie.

“There’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.” –Sarah Kay