Posts
I wasn't brought up with oceans. Not even with one ocean. Indiana is just about as far as you can get from a coast, so I have no experience with and a healthy fear of those oversized bathtubs with the incessant water motion: tide in, tide out, tide in again, now a neap tide—and always the restless waves driving in to shore.
Not an ocean but close is the Mediterranean. When we were in Menton, France, for three months years ago, we used to sit and read by a little cove. It was quite small and fairly packed with people: I remember two little boys playing at the water's edge, and heavy old women and men whose bronzed-leather skin did nothing to sweeten the sight of their massive folds of flesh spilling from bikinis and Speedos. The cove was rocky, not sandy. We readers scattered around the edges, perched on large, uncomfortable rocks, as we took the sun (this was mid-April of one of the coldest springs that area had seen in years).
The two little boys were quiet as they played, and the readers turned their pages stealthily, so nothing interrupted the sound of the water and the baseball-sized rocks that made up the shore. A wave came in quietly. Then, as it receded, the water jostled the smooth rocks and made them click together: chik-a-chik-a-chik-a-chik. It was a sound I had never heard before, and it became my favourite sound.
Two years ago I went to a beach in southern North Carolina. It was a large, week-long gathering of my children and grandchildren, orchestrated by their father and his other (newer) family. My children have much more experience with ocean waters than I do, and they love jumping waves and floating out beyond the breakers. Once I allowed as how I'd like to do that, too, I was escorted out, holding the hand of one of my grown-up children, and they taught me: "Here it comes, Mum. Jump it or duck under it—but do it! NOW!" And then, once beyond the scary part, I would float, my non-buoyant body supported by the salt water, and gaze at the blue sky. It was important to remember to remove hearing aids and glasses before approaching that water. The sea has no lost-and-found booth.
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment