coffee saltwater taffy and two-thirds of summer
After being taken down by the waves, I made it back to shore as a different person. The change wasn't instantaneous -- my body is still metabolizing what happened -- but it is, nonetheless, certain.
The water was cold. I'd gone from pulling my pants up to my knees to tying them around my thighs as each breaking wave called me further and further out. I played tag with the tide, kicked up sand as I avoided getting wet from the waist up, spat out salt, laughed with my friend. He chased a pink rubber clog into the retreating tide for me, which prompted us to deposit our belongings further away from the water line.
How far we'd come, adding depth to a hole we chanced upon to chasing the glittering horizon.
My friend is 5'8" to my 5'1", and though the half-foot height difference made for good joke material, my stature was funniest when the sea came up to my thighs and only up to their knees. I lamented how the bottoms of my pants had gotten wet despite my best efforts to turn them into shorts, but it was also freeing -- at that point, why not go all in?
We waded forward, closer and closer to the zone where waves first formed. I don't remember what prompted my warning, whether it was having a chilling wave break against my chest or a glimmer of advanced intuition or even a jinx, but I shouted a warning to my companion: "Hold onto your glasses!"
Not minutes later, a wave taller than him took us both down.
I turned to face the shore and let the wave knock me forward. For a moment, I was under, but I must have been pushed a good way along the sand. I stood up and looked around--
"My glasses!"
They were gone. Swiped from their nose by relentless tongues of the sea.
It was sobering. We were soaking, sand made it everywhere, and the jackets and hats we brought to keep ourselves warm through the night were waterlogged. Hindsight questions why we brought them to the waterside, but neither of us anticipated getting tempted to venture so far out -- to the point where the velcro on my friend's waist-clipped wallet was ruined and their glasses were lost to the Pacific.
He was a good sport about it, saying that they were loose frames, that I did warn him ("I warned you bro, I told you to hold onto your glasses dog!"), and that it simply was what it was. We lingered there anyway, making casual requests for miracles guised as jests to the Ocean Gods as I scanned the waterline. I think I was more upset about it than he was -- like somehow, it'd been my fault.
But I think that's just how I instinctively feel about a lot of things.
As I sit in my bedroom, a week out from his interstate visit to spend time with me, I find myself missing the cold embrace of a wild lover. Edna Pontellier, from Kate Chopin's The Awakening, surfaces in my memory. Though it's been years since I've read the novel, its tragically decisive conclusion is like a hand on my shoulder.
That moment could have taken more from us than glasses, but luck was intent on walking us back to camp.
I'm reminded, too, of the teeth-chattering chasm underneath a waterfall that I once swam through at sixteen, and the way the current almost pulled me down, down, down. Then there's the watering hole at twenty-one, where a friend clung to my shoulders as a cramp rendered them unable to swim. But the waterfall was gorgeous; my body remembers that degree of cold and the shock of how quickly the rockshelf ended. And the watering hole was healing; I sat in the way of rushing currents with friends, lodged between rocks, and soaked in the sun.
Zooming out on the cabin destination of friends from middle school for next month led me to take in the entire globe. How vast our world is! How much life and beauty it has been home to! So many waters to swim -- so many more seconds I've spent on the same land than at sea, much less exploring other continents. I wonder what it's like to be a strong swimmer, or a surfer, or any kind of person that has logged more time immersed in water than I. The delight of a shower or a bath is never lost on me, so as I recollect the opportunities I've had to unwind in either lake or sea...
I looked out the window to ponder, only to find a pair of tiny birds scoping out my roof as a possible nesting site. They flitted between the screening and my apple tree, heads tilting in that rapid and inquisitive way birds do.
I hope they come back. I hope they choose my home to make theirs.
The other day, a jade hummingbird hovered less than a yard away from my face. On the drive back from the sea, I watched a pair of bounding rabbits circle each other through tall grass. There was also a lone egret, stark white against the reeds of a marsh.
Images of nature comfort me when my heartstrings are frayed. I've done a good job at soothing my soul in the wake of developments in my character and life path, but something is continuing to itch at my consciousness. Something that might be made clear if I were standing with waves at my ankles, or maybe illuminated by sun filtered through treetops. And yet I can't bring myself to move from my computer chair, so I summon those landscapes through my words.
With two-thirds of summer remaining and my two closest friends returning to university in the Fall, this season is both the calmest and most urgent summer of my life. I'm not sure if I still qualify as a "young" adult, but I've grown disconcerted by the patterns and habits I've maintained over the last four years of my life. I've outgrown them, as in I've met a ceiling with what I can learn in my current conditions, but so long as I remain in this town, I'm rootbound. Surely, there are things I can do to jumpstart my system -- I can do my laundry and rearrange my room and put my nose down to work on my art, as I've been yearning to do through my academic obligations.
Right now though, I'm content with just letting the coffee saltwater taffy melt on my tongue instead of chewing it down.
Getting back in touch with why I write has been a process of remembering how I used to write. My passion for it was stoked by the comments and community I built as a fanfiction author throughout my teen years, with my most recent foray as an adult having simmered off before I finished undergrad. After that, most of my writing was either kept between friends or strictly Academic -- now, with all my world to preserve with my muse, I struggle to figure out what to write.
So, as it goes, I am just ... writing.
Here's to a summer full of that -- just writing.
May the lingering sensation of the sea and lost prescription lenses electrify my voice.