A Love Letter to the Sea

I may inform you concerning the memento seashell I used to be given as a toddler, how I hushed the room and held it to my ear, keen it to sound of distant waves, straining to listen to all I longed to know of surf and spray and salt. Or concerning the street journey, at 18, that lastly introduced me from a landlocked state to the ocean, how I stood agape on the sight of a lot water.

I may inform you how I stated “sure” on a seashore, on a day too chilly for swimming, each of us too sunburnt, too younger to vow one another something, and but. I may inform you of my first night time within the metropolis we now name dwelling, after I woke within the morning to the cries of seagulls, and the way, these 10 years later, the saltwater has softened me.

I may inform you what the bay regarded like on the day my mother known as from a hospital 1000’s of miles away to explain my father’s respiration. And the way, when all of it felt like an excessive amount of, I went to the water.

I may inform you about each time I’ve unfold my seashore towel on sand, grateful to put my physique down on its heat. And all these summers tenting on a grassy hillside, sleeping in whereas the marine layer rolled over the islands and the harbor seals surfaced under us within the cove, the cheerful slaps of their flippers within the waves.

And the way I paced the boardwalk within the rain, backwards and forwards, hoping labor would start and reminding myself to breathe. Or the night time our child slept by {an electrical} storm that blew in off the coast, how I pressed my nostril to the glass of the window and watched lightning streak the sky. And the good flash when the transformer blew, then the whole lot went darkish.

I may listing all we’ve discovered there: the ocean stars and bull kelp, the moon jellies and mussel shells, the sun-bleached plastic automobile our daughter dug out of sand, and respite after we wanted to get out of the home and fall into a fantastic distance, to really feel ourselves a part of one thing bigger.

I may inform you how we’ve introduced our infants to the water, how our buddy who loves the ocean has taken it upon himself to dip their toes in, a baptism of types. I may inform you of the grains of sand caught within the cracks of automobile seats and the bath drain. In regards to the clump of seaweed our son carried dwelling in his fist. And our daughter’s assortment of seashore glass, which she retains atop her dresser, uninteresting little gems that clink collectively in a washed out jam jar.

I may inform you about all the vacations we’ve marked with seashore walks and heat thermoses, the slices of birthday cake we’ve shared at sundown. Or about plunging into frigid waters mid-winter, on the cusp of one thing, and shivering on moist sand with adrenaline and chilly hope.

About how I look ahead to the timber to lose their leaves annually so I can see the ocean once more on the finish of our avenue, an previous buddy.

I may snatch a stick and write all this within the sand, look ahead to the tide to rise and fall, and hear for the waves to whisper again. “Your flip,” I’d say to the ocean, and imply it.

Inform me about a spot you like. The place do you come back time and again?

Kaitlyn Teer is an essayist and a contributing editor at Cup of Jo. She teaches inventive writing and lives along with her partner and two youngsters in Washington, by the Salish Sea.

P.S. The mind-clearing magic of chilly water swimming and the way candy is that this seashore proposal?