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| A Paint-n-Sip piece by Megan |
The Low Country, Georgia
In July 2016, I am exploring the coastal area with an intention of finding a beach that I might return to. It has been sixteen years since I’ve walked on sand and swum in the ocean; I’ve missed the salt water, the sea oats, the circling gulls, and a feeling of freedom that I’ve known since childhood. This is a forward step at a time of change.
Route 17 runs parallel to the coastline, and I explore it in both directions. My search north turns up a disappointing view of a nondescript collection of small businesses and a few houses interrupted by scattered pine trees. Heading south, there are comfortable looking homes on the winding road but still no exit sign to a beach. At a large intersection, I am discouraged both by waiting to move in heavy traffic and by not having located a beach. Then, just as the light turns green, I look up and with barely enough time turn onto a wide, one-way lane of a double lane causeway bordered by broad expanses of sea grasses that move in the breath of a warm breeze. I am spellbound. The domed sky appears as soft as cloth, and the sun soloes at mid-morning. I feel a new comfort, and the further I drive, the more my heart opens.
When I finally do find a beach, I stop the car, walk to the water’s edge and with the shorts and shirt I am wearing, without a moment of doubt, I drop my purse on the loose sand and dive in. I dive again and again into the oncoming waves, coming up sputtering salty leaks from my mouth and laughing—laughing until there are no thoughts left in me. I feel emptied and freed and filled with new energy, all at the same time. Drying off on the warm sand, happy, I untangle my hair, smoothing it back into its elastic, and pause, feeling this new calm. I have always known that the sand and the ocean are my touchstones, but it has been a long time since I’ve experienced this feeling of completeness. I know that a missing part of me has been returned.
July 2017, again at Sea Island, Georgia
This early in the morning, the parking lot has plenty of spaces. By eleven, with a sky drenched in blue, parking will be limited. I toe off my sandals. My feet are fine here, on the coarser and cooler sand, sand and feet meeting in the way old friends do. I pause at the end of the boardwalk, my hands loosening on the handle of the four-wheeled wagon as my eyes take in the full view from north to south. With a deep breath, I think, I am actually here. I give the wagon a tug and lean forwards, pulling against the thick sand that is grabbing the wheels for company.
Quiet and still on the island of my big, outspread towel, with my arms and hands in back supporting me like the legs of a beach chair, I let my mind empty. My beach longing had left the summer before, and in its place is a new acceptance that I deserve to spend time, even if only several days, at a beach on the east coast of America. As my gaze wanders, I take in every scene, finding each interesting in the way a child is fascinated by colorful helium balloons. A conglomeration of beach items are the shore around me: a brown bag lunch, a squat thermos with a spigot, my beach bag with a small, fern-green towel inside, the book I won’t read, a water bottle, and sunscreen that needs to be rubbed in well if I don’t want a white face. My sunglasses and a shapeless faded blue hat complete my supplies.
When the cries of circling seagulls become the ocean calling me, I leave my musings and cross the dry sand to where the damp sand causes faint impressions of my feet—silent messages to other walkers. I pause as the newly born flutters of foam dissolve and then somehow progress higher than the wave before, while casting my eyes like a net of curiosity over the tiny shells and breathing holes that turn out to be of greater interest to the feeding shore birds than they are to me.
Twice daily, the moon’s energy moves the salt-tanged water in and out as a visitor offering the loyalty of returning, but never staying. With each of my slow steps, I drink in a surrendering as I move farther from the safety of the rim of froth and the beached shells into the rhythm of the deep blue-green hues of the leaving and returning. I feel the waves opening to flow around my legs. My hands, out to my sides, trail temporary paths. I am becoming, in the part of me that can let go, the ocean. A quiet, inner voice croons, “Don’t go too deep.” I stop at waist height, turn to face the north horizon and begin swimming parallel to shore. Taking a deep breath and parting the ocean with closed arms that will open in an arc, I dive in, kicking free of the air. With my chin toward my chest, the crown of my head further opens a tunnel for my body to follow… until with my breath almost gone I arch my back, sending my head up above the light-dazzled surface. I head north, stroking toward Canada, feeling I am a new species remembering my ancient rhythms.
February 2018
I think of an ocean watercolor I saw last summer, hanging on a wall in my daughter’s home. I had looked at it for a long time, wanting to keep it with me, but as it was my daughter’s, I had done the next best thing and taken a photo of it. There is a story in that painting, as yet untold, that will become a beach tale, taking me there even when the beach is thousands of miles away.
My realization is, “Imagination originates in reality and in the unknown stored within us when a doorway opens, delighting.”