Skip to main content

Point of Land.

I have been going to the same beach since I was a baby. Since I could hold my own in the water and had the ability to dive under the surface, I have made it a habit, each and every time that I swim there, to orient my body towards the same point of land off in the distance and dive down, down and back up again. I emerge again blinking back the salt water and use that point as a compass needle. For just a moment, it is just me and the ocean and those rocks.

I have never actually physically stood on that point of land. It can only be seen from land or from the water.  But each year since I was a child, I have dived into the water towards that point.  Like blowing out candles on a cake, I renew my promises to myself and direct my whole self towards this jut of trees and rocks.  Each dive under the water, connects me back to the 12, 16, 22 year old and the me I am now.  I am , among other things, a delicate balance between salt and water, I plunge down  into the cold depth and come up for air.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Kate Hall8/20/2014 8:05 am

    great. and woah.
    sometimes going back, and going forward are all one big rollup. cool to have such a ritual...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I entered August without you.

 I won't visit you this month.  You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you.   I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.
1 comment
Read more

Fists full of lettuce

 It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom.  She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer).  Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life.  Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years.  Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer.  It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still.   We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue.  Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision.  They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped.  Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...
1 comment
Read more