Deceptive Ocean

My first time experiencing the coastline was on a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, at the age of nine; old enough to enter the ocean without having to hold my mother’s hand, still too young to travel the boardwalk alone with my cousins and siblings as they discovered the interesting city life. Still, the shops and people were hardly what had my attention the first time I got to see the edge of my known world.

Looking out to the edge of the horizon when all that is visible is frothy blue water is more minimizing than any set of mountains or plains. I remember the ocean being vast on the side of being frightening; yet the smell made it almost alluring, so aromatic that it would be hard to describe it in any way other than simply ‘the ocean’. Salty and briny to the point of having a taste in the back of my throat, it filled my nose and my mouth until no other smell was able to permeate. Also unique to the ocean experience was the feel of the sand, not very similar to the bagged grains that were dumped into my sandbox as a child. It was deceivingly soft in some areas, until the bits of glass and shell worked to the top of the piles and clung to my feet.

That girl experiencing the ocean for the first time was as invincible as any child, though I never was as outgoing as those closest to me, past or present. Even my timid nature couldn't keep me from being annoyed at the overbearing way my mother would not allow me to enter far into the ocean, always insisting that I wasn't able to wade out past the height of my thighs or the tide would sweep me out like any piece of driftwood. She had a point, of course, as I couldn't swim then, and still haven’t learned. But what did logic matter to a child who was experiencing something for the first time, and wanted to experience more, more, more?

During that vacation to the beach, my mother was knocked over by a wave while barely in the water, and was lucky to not have drowned. Something as beautiful as that ocean--captivating in the hypnotic way the waves could lull me to sleep, comforting with the sand between my toes, familiar in that scent caught on the wind—was also more than able to take away a life, with no brain to question the morality, no emotions to sympathize with the victims.

The ocean made me feel minimized as a child, almost insignificant against its never-ending rush of power, but that was not the last time that I would feel small. There are always going to be firsts in life, and the first time I experienced the ocean introduced me to the lessons of caution, possible death hidden in beauty, to just listen to my mother and stop complaining. Of course, I have yet to experience the first time I follow these lessons, still too captivated by the softness of the sand to worry about the shells embedded in my heels.