This post is Grassroots, meaning a reader posted it directly. If you see an issue with it, contact an editor.
If you’d like to post a Grassroots post, click here!

0.1
July 29, 2022

Salt Brined Hearts

Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels.

It’s July of 1994 and I’m at the start of the longest twenty minutes of my life. The twenty minutes between the time my mom finishes fully slathering me in sunscreen and the moment that I am finally allowed to sprint into the Atlantic. I will ask her ten times in the next twenty minutes if I can go in now. I will eat a sandy, triangle of watermelon to try and keep myself busy and end up with a paste of watermelon juice, sand, and sunscreen on my hands.
I’ll look at my palms for just a second trying to decide if it bothers me, but then I’ll decide it doesn’t matter. Because in twelve more minutes nothing in the world will exist outside of me and the frigid, east coast ocean…
I took my kids to the beach this week. During midsummer in New England the sun is brilliant. It was strong on this day. The wind even stronger. It blew so loudly. The combination of the wind with the constant breaking of choppy waters made it so that we couldn’t hear each other yell standing even ten feet away from one another. Tourist’s rainbow colored beach umbrellas rolled across the sand like tumbleweeds.
But we are all New England kids. Heading home early was never even a passing thought. We were there for six hours and only left when evening thunder forced us out. The perfect ending to a beach day. When my kids remember mid-summer beach days, they will not remember post beach ice cream without thunderstorms. Somehow it always works out that way. The sky reminding us with claps and torrents, how good a dry home feels on salty skin.
I stood close to the water and watched the kids completely forget that there is a world outside of salt and sea foam and waves that pummel you with exactly the right kind of strength and playfulness. Somebody’s grandfather sauntered up next to me and told me his grandson was learning a lot from watching my kids. “They’re pretty great,” I say, smiling big. I told him the waves today were making me feel a bit more cautious than usual. He said in his stoic, grandfatherly way, “Oh, they’ll be alright ‘less they get out there too deep.”
He was a veteran, I learned. His certainty immediately brought my anxiety level down a notch and still I yelled for them to come in a little, knowing they couldn’t hear me. I said it for myself. To them, I didn’t exist right then. And that was okay. That is the way it should be.
I am nine. I am floating on my back out past the breaks, eyes closed, being gently rocked by the water. There is something about being out here that makes me feel in one way, completely separate from the rest of the world and yet more safe than anywhere else. As soon as I am far enough out to not hear my mother– in her big floppy sun hat and round nineties sunglasses, skin white from zinc oxide– I am someone else entirely. Or maybe not someone else, maybe just exactly who I am and nothing more.
Who I get to be when the world doesn’t feel like a scary place. When I am being held and swayed by the womb of the earth.
I had so many fears as a kid. The ocean was not one of them. I was afraid of house fires. I had recurring dreams of them. I was afraid of the trailer park with the man in a big white van “selling bikes” to little girls in corduroy overalls. Yes, one actually tried to get me into the back of his van one time.
I was afraid of all the things I guessed at that were happening in my family that no one spoke to me about. The things that were too big for small ears, but felt in my bones nonetheless. I was afraid of not saying the right thing. I was afraid of not doing the right thing.
Growing up in a Baptist family and being taught there was an actual, physical place intended simply to burn and torture humans forever, how could the world be safe? When I looked out the window of the car on family road trips, I didn’t have happy, childish daydreams. I imagined the part of the Bible that described the skies rolling back like a scroll and panicked that it could happen at any moment and when it did I would be separated from my parents forever.
I never had any of those thoughts in the water. My nine year old heart knew– if my brain didn’t– that the Mother held me so sweetly out there. There was an indescribable comfort in the utter aloneness, or rather– the oneness. Somehow every scary part of the world was left back in the parking lot with the cigarette butts and empty Dunkin Donuts cups.
Eventually, hours that seemed like minutes later, lips blue and fingers numb, I’d see my mom waving me down and I’d begrudgingly make my way out of the water. It was okay because I knew we’d be back soon. It was midsummer in New England. The Atlantic a second home for just a couple months.
Now my kids ask me four or five times for just a couple more minutes in the water and I can never say no. While I hope with my entire soul that they feel more safe in this world than I did, pulling them from the joy and unbound being of the water feels cruel.
They come up to the beach blanket to dry off. I turn my back to pack up a cooler or shake out a towel and when I’ve turned around they’re back in the water again. “We’re just rinsing off!” they shout when they see me, hands on my hips in pretend exasperation. How can I rush them?
How can I do anything but offer them another slice of sandy watermelon and wait for them to have brined their hearts completely?
Leave a Thoughtful Comment
X

Read 0 comments and reply

Top Contributors Latest

Erin McNulty  |  Contribution: 215