A Healthy Respect
The last time I was at the beach, I was cold and wrapped up in a cocoon of wool blankets and borrowed sweaters. My friend Vicky left me to go make sure she had locked her car. I was told to stay and guard our things. It was a cold November night, and the wind assaulted the sails of the nearby boats, making me jump with every crack of the canvas.
Black waves slapped and rolled onto the wet surface, pulling small rocks and bits of driftwood closer and closer with every tug. As the moon ascended into the sky, silver caps grew on the crest of every wave just before it broke and spilled onto the sand. The moon’s glistening strings pulled the waves closer to me with every passing minute, the tide gaining strength. It was as if the beach was pulling me too. Or perhaps, the water was walking towards me.
What a terrible thing the water is. What a monster.
I remember the first time I saw real water. I was very young, and my family of three had traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My mother and brother were fond of the ocean, the large foreboding waves of the Pacific were their playground. For most of the trip, I stayed on the beach chairs, drinking non-alcoholic piña coladas and watching lethargic tourists turn deeper and deeper shades of red. Several times my mother tried to get me to join them in the open waters, but even the tiniest ripple of the water incited my fear of being swept away, and I quickly had to be returned to shore.
My mom signed us up for a snorkeling trip one afternoon, with two other families on a small white boat with silver guardrails. I remember squeezing my chubby body into a red life jacket whose plastic clasps seemed to be the only thing between life and a certain watery death. My mom who was about to dive in, saw my face and eyes turning as red as the lifejacket and beckoned me over to her side.
“You can’t have a fear of the ocean,” she said as she forced rubber fins I'd forgotten onto my clammy feet. “Just have a healthy respect for the water.”
She flipped backward off the boat, disappearing into the salt.
My legs shook as I used the ladder to ease myself in. Once in the water, I was turned turtle before I splayed onto my belly, the life jacket keeping me hoisted well above the surface. I looked down. Deep blue nothing. I started to cry, my tears mixing effortlessly with the salt water.
I understand the power of the ocean, the massive strength of its surge. In out, in out, dragging things deeper and deeper. Even if you are to stand on the safe edge of the beach where foam and soft waves rush to greet your bare ankles, pretty soon your feet will be buried, the sand below being ripped out from under you. In its depths it is pitch black, an abyss stretching longer than the height of the earth’s atmosphere. It is unknown to man, about as unknown as space, and equally as bleak and deadly.
I heard a story of a boy who drowned at a Chicago beach, on a day the water was cloudy. He didn't flail, kick, or scream, and nobody had realized he had gone other until his frantic mother realized he was missing. He was presumed dead, and the beachgoers were told to link hands and cover the length of the water's edge. They were told to wade in until one of them felt his body with their feet. They found the boy, barely twenty feet in, his lips a purer blue than the water. I imagine his life went out in a gurgle and a rush of bubbles.
I used to have dreams about an immaculate white beach with sand stretching as far as my line of vision. Sometimes the waves were chopping, churning ominously before breaking. Other times its surface was smooth as a pane of glass. I never touched the water. Instead, I remained on the sand, staring out at the horizon, watching it chew and spit people out indiscriminately. If it’s depths were to take me, I knew they would end my life without so much as a second thought. So I kept my distance.
Today I do not. I find no greater happiness than playing in the waves, letting them push me under the surface, their power pressing me to the sand below. Even the cool silk of October water surrounding my waist, an unfrozen belt of ice is sublime. There is no greater purity than the beach at night when the wind is blowing so hard you can’t hear anything but the roar of the surf over its breath. Then all is quiet when you submerge yourself, and even your breath is stolen from you —squeezed out by contracting lungs. The sting of salt, the tickle of algae, the guiding pull of the current.
Sitting on the beach waiting for Vicky, I knew I shouldn't sit so close to the water's edge. I knew that the tide is fast approaching, and soon I would be wet. I knew that rip currents are worse with high tide, that undertows could take me with swift ease.
I dropped my blankets and ripped off my sand filled converse. In one swift motion, I easily crossed the distance between my place on the beach and the water’s edge. The waves licked my toes and consumed my footprints as I waded into the darkness. Dark walls of water barraged my knees, making my jeans heavy, and threatened to take me with them.
“Grace! What the hell?” Vicky screamed over the roar of the water and the assault of the wind. “Get back here!”
Once on shore, she dragged me back to her car and made me remove my wet clothes only to re-wrap myself in dry blankets.
“Don’t scare me like that,” she said as she turned the key to the ignition, ready to leave the beach in the past.