I used to live in this town. Alone, in a house just over the dunes.
Today is the day, and I have made my annual pilgrimage back to the beach.
I lie back and close my eyes. My body on sand, my head perched on raised grass, the sun beaming glorious whites and peaches through my eyelids.
I remember the day, well over three decades ago now. The perfect day.
There was sunshine, a full moon, a high spring tide.
Sprawling thoughts on saltwater, emotions. A personal leap forward.
Let me explain.
Firstly, I am no psychologist, but some time before that perfect day, I had started to picture emotions as a chaotic body of saltwater inside us. As we matured into adults, this body of water had to be controlled, or covered. I reasoned that the type of cover we developed was important. Too little emotional cover, and our wellbeing would ultimately explode, too much, and it would implode. Due to various factors, some of us develop a healthy lining, durable enough to withstand pressure, porous enough for saline tears to flow. Some develop cover that is too porous, others, cover that is too solid, too hard.
Living where I did, I likened such materials to netting, wood, sandstone, hard rock.
I further reasoned that, lest we explode or implode, we would need pores, channels of release, of an appropriate width, through our emotional cover. If, like myself, one has developed a solid material as cover, such channels are not readily available.
Boring through such cover takes education and constant mental effort — this work a necessity if we are to grow, develop healthy relationships, be happy.
Now, in my little house all those years ago, there was always some sand in my ground floor rooms. I remember on that perfect day, I didn’t sweep it away. I never did again. I started to see saw those yellow-brown grains as residue from the fault lines I had finally managed to create in my own emotional cover.
A mental leap.
I can do this.
And so, barefoot, and under a blue sky, I made the short walk down to the beach. The call of the sea pulled me up to the summit of the dunes, where the shouts and ramblings of the surf confronted me.
I remember the tension in my jaw and toes, that I had long been unaware of, loosening further.
Perhaps that is what draws us to the sea. The clockwork movement of its tides encourages a manageable rhythm, a calming of our own inner seas, with all their tremblings and eruptions.
With musings in hand I sat down, in the very same spot that I occupy today. I remember burying my head between my raised knees, and threading my hand under my legs to get a clear view of my watch.
And then out of nowhere, a lock of dark wet hair passed over my shoulder and pressed against my ear.
Her playful whisper drowned out my thoughts. “You ready for me then?”
Shouts of children at the shoreline, snap me back to the here and now. I sit up and watch them playing.
I remember myself as a young boy down there. Small sailing boats bouncing over whitetipped waves. Fishing boats disappearing behind the pier, squawking seagulls in tow. My tiny feet glued to the seabed, saltwater and seaweed advancing and retreating over them. I am crying, my parents calling me back to base.
And here I am again, tears closing in on my pupils.
I take hold of some sand in both of my hands, whilst my eyes bore steadfastly through the horizon.
A childhood of twenty-five years, a marriage of thirty. The years of pilgrimage, made not on the day she passed, but on the perfect day, four.
After clutching the sand tightly for a short time, I stand up purposefully. With my head nodding, I open my hands and let the yellow-brown grains fall through the cracks of my fingers.
Scottish writer and playwright Paul Shaw Smith is a former physics student and current Japanese fiction lover, father of two, and husband to a long-suffering Californian wife. Lover of small word counts, and author of the short play Moscow, Scotland (published by Lazy Bee Scripts).
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