Hi! How are you? I’m already fantasizing about fall and the holidays for some reason and summer hasn’t even begun. May gray is teasing me.

At any rate, here are some odds & ends from the past few days of thinking.

BUT PLEASE NOT TODAY

I’m at a coffee shop downtown, drinking matcha tea and thinking about how much I love spending whole days out in the world alone.

My brother and his girlfriend, the one who got him on that seven-step skincare routine, are moving in together. We’re all excited. I already sent him a congratulatory gif, our main mode of sibling communication, and he replied with one of two birds landing in a nest over a caption that read “nailed it”.

I’m melting. They’re adorable.

But a part of me is also like, wow, this might be it. They each might never be truly alone ever again. And I hope this is the beginning of their happily ever after as partners in this world, but it has been making me think. See, I’m sitting alone at this coffeeshop and I’m gallivanting around downtown taking photos and I have no where else to be. I’m not responsible for anyone other than myself. I’m a fetus in the womb of the world. It’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s this rare, special time that we are taught that we will have to give up as we craft out lives. It’s a special treat for the mom of the girl I babysit to get to go and grab a coffee by herself for an hour. That blows my mind. And so this thing has been happening, where instead of feeling lonely or sad or even jealous that everyone else seems to have a person to share their life with, I’ve been feeling so grateful for this magical time of gallivanting through the world by myself. These are the days that I can’t wait to tell someone all about one day. Because don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to share my life with someone. Ask anyone. But not today. Please not today. I want more time. I need more time. I want to drink it all in.

The best part about sitting alone in a coffeeshop is the people watching. You notice everything when you’re alone. And you definitely notice when you’re trying to write a blog post and a group of corporate bankers stands directly next to you waiting for their nitro cold brews gossiping about Brian and Jared from the office and their numbers for the quarter. I’m not even kidding. Budgets, dinners, and caviar have all been mentioned. Along with several statistics and numbers that I cannot even begin to wrap my English-major-brain around. If I so much as hear math being mentioned I break out in hives. Oh, wait. It’s getting even better. They’re talking about Jessica and how she’s “actually doing pretty well” considering how awful she was when she started. Amazing. I love it here. Finance brotherhood is real and it is invading my serenity.

But that’s a serenity I talk more about here. Today is about water.

MEMORIES OF WATER

Natalie Goldberg said that swimming should always be somewhere in your writing, that you should write about some memory of your body being immersed in water, in that element that is so strange when you really think about it.

How do you feel about water? Did you grow up by the ocean or wish that you did? What about vacations? Lakes? Pools? Did you ever think that there was a shark in the swimming pool or was that just me?

I think that the relationship you held to water growing up can reveal things. Memories of water always seem to have an edge to them. I grew up with a pool in my backyard and a ten minute drive to the Pacific Ocean, so I could drown in all of the stories that I have about water. I could tell you about learning how to swim or all of the times that the waves pulled me so deeply under them that I was sure I would never meet the surface again. Or about the feeling of saltwater in your nose. Or about all the times waves have knocked me naked, for all to see. Or about the summer that floating through the ocean healed my heart.

They each mean something. But I’ll narrow it down.

this is about surrender

Here’s one. I remember being a kid and my dad taking me out into the ocean, far past where I could stand, and teaching me how to dive under the waves. I remember it being terrifying. It was one of those things that only a dad would make you do. There I was, this little girl staring into a glassy wall of water that I learned pretty quick was never going to stop for me. It took being pummeled, pulled under, and thrown around several times before I understood what my dad was trying to teach me. If you just held your breath and dove headfirst right into the wave, it would leave you alone. No matter how big it was, if you gave in to it, if you didn’t try to be bigger than it, you would just pop up on the other side of, unscathed. There was a kind of rhythm to it. It felt like dancing with water. And once I learned that, I wasn’t scared. Even now, nothing makes me feel more connected to this world than running into the ocean and diving under the waves, moving far out, past the white water and crowds to where everything is very still and you can just float. I still laugh at all the tourists who turn their backs on the ocean and get knocked down by a force so much greater than they gave it credit for. Well, not laugh. But, you know.

It was the Sea of Cortez that really humbled me though. Growing up, I used to go to Cabo with my family every summer. It was paradise. But you learn fast that the sun and the ocean in Mexico are not like the sun and the ocean in San Diego. Just walking along the beach, death seems to bite at your ankles with each wave. You can’t imagine the force. A massive wall of water would would crash in an explosion and then violently shoot out across the beach, spreading like pancake batter on a hot skillet. I can still hear it. And if you weren’t paying attention, it would knock you down and suck you out to sea. I have memories of my nana and my brother holding onto my hands in a death grip as the ocean pulled at my feet in a tug-of-war that I was never quite sure of who would win. But I loved that water. Its danger tantalized me. There was never anyone in it and that gave it this raw, organic look. It seemed untouched in all the ways that California beaches were brutally manhandled by summer crowds. Parents could not simply slap some sunscreen on their kid and throw them into the waves for the day. They had to hold them close. They had to tell them that the ocean would not show them any mercy, that they had to accept their inferiority in the face of such power. They had to shatter their child’s illusions about the world being a safe and warm place. They had to teach them to respect the earth. I was that child.

the dance you cannot lead

As I grew up, that lesson stayed with me.

When I was a teenager experiencing heartbreak and grief for the first time, the waves that crashed though my body felt a hell of a lot like the ones that pummeled and pulled at me me as a child. The way that they were never constant was the killer. Maybe if the pain never stopped, it wouldn’t be so bad. You would just get used to it. But it would come in one big, violent wave. And then there would be peace. But only for a moment, only for long enough to make sure that the next wave felt like hell all over again. Anyone who has has ever known grief has known this. So I did what my dad taught me. I didn’t run. I didn’t try to be any bigger than I was. And I didn’t try to get out either. I stayed there, in that massive body of water, and submitted. I dove headfirst into every wave that it threw at me. I actually used to do this thing where every time that it hit me, I would drop to my knees and press my forehead to the floor until it passed. It was my way of feeling it, of allowing it to move through me. Tears would just pour out and the whole world would go very quiet, like being underwater. It was hard to see anything clearly during those moments and it even stung a little bit to breathe, as if the air was salt water. But then it would pass. I would resurface on the other side to feel the sun on my face again. There was a rhythm to this too. It was a dance and it was one that I learned pretty quickly that I could not lead. If you let the grief have its its way with you, you’ll survive. It’s the fight that we put up that kills us. My mother always told me that you don’t swim against a current. That that’s a fight you won’t ever win.

For there are plenty of things that you should fight for, plenty of times where going against the grain is how you grow and change and become better. Most of the time, I believe in being assertive and unique and anything but submissive to the will of the world. But those aren’t the times that I’m talking about. I’m talking about submitting to natural forces, to the earth, not to the world. And emotions are a part of the earth, that much I have come to be positive about. Love and grief and anxiety and joy permeate the soil. They are the minerals of the sea. Which is to say, they are the elements of life. I learned pretty early on to not spit them out, that that was where all the nutrients was.

JOIN THE FUN

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