I had to do this as a writing assignment, it turned out to be a lot more than I bargained for. I wanted to share it. I tried to fix any weird formatting mishaps when I copied and pasted it, sorry if I missed any that makes it odd to read.
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Break in the Clouds
What am I willing to live for? A paradoxical war is waging in the pit of my stomach. I am panicky and petrified to answer the question. What am I most afraid of, knowing the answer or the process of self-discovery to retrieve it? It is the answer and conquering of it that is forcing me forward. I have not lived much life, yet and I am being asked to catalogue it, compartmentalize it in order of importance and on the surface I am resentful. Deep in me, I want to know. I find myself overwhelmed at the idea but the only way to start is to start at the beginning.
The beach. I live for the beach. In the winter, it’s the wet slap of cold wind to the face when you step onto the sand. The thousand needles of sand and rain assault your skin. Your hair is whipped and tangled. Sand under your feet dissolves and the picks it up, swirls it, then deposits it a few feet over, a few miles over but it is one of nature’s secrets. The beach is riddled with them, the shells hiding beneath the sand. You can hear the birds nestled for warmth in the reeds but you cannot see them. Two lovers walk hand-in-hand and disappear into the tall grass with secret smiles only for each other. They know the grass will protect them-Mother Nature will shield them. The sky and the water are gray, churning, tortured. Your bare feet tingle in the arctic surf. Waves are violent and crash with a thunderous boom on the sand, pulling itself back into the abyss. The surf ripping at your feet that threatens to take you, daring you to defy it. Storms rage against the open space on the beach. They bruise, slowly shedding the paint from the nearby houses that intrude. The salt of the sea spray devour the timbers and clapboard shields of the home.
In the summer, the beach smells of sea and sunscreen. The wind is softer, sweeter, and murmurs in the tall grass that smells like an aged book left on a shelf to collect dust. You accept the surfs daring invitation. Jumping in the waves you let the cold seep in. You retire to a brightly colored striped towel, your feet caked in the searing hot sand. The muscles are sluggish from the cold and the sun reawakens them. You close your eyes and let the shadows dance behind your eyelids while you feel the warmth seep into your skin, Nature’s blanket. Sink into the sand, it becomes a cradle for your body. In the winter the waves rumble but in the summer they whisper. They brush against the sand with a distant hum. Is it the sluggish cold, the blanket of warmth, or distant hum of the ocean that creates stillness in the body? The body is still-but it remembers. It knows the movement in the ocean and I still feel the gently rocking motion on the sand. The body does not forget, the lovers do not forget.
The beach is a sacred place for my family and me. A few years ago my family and I got a call that we were not expecting. My grandpa had been diagnosed with emphysema. He had been a long time smoker. He came to visit a couple of months later. We were all sitting around a table at a mutual family member’s home. I was so scared. He was smoking cigarettes and huffing on oxygen. Right then the family knew he was headed somewhere terrible and fast. We got the call we were expecting, he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. I was in agony. My Grandpa and I had a special relationship. It was never something we acknowledged or was at the surface of our relationship, it was just there. My parents went down to visit a few times to be with him. Each time they saw he was getting worse but were afraid to say it. Grandpa, being the stubborn man he is, said he was told he had at least a year. We were all preparing to say goodbye. My dad was having a hard time watching his own father have life slowly pulled from him. That is when my mom decided to take him to the beach. It was in the winter. I imagine them on the beach, the wet wind slapping their face, walking hand in hand into the tall grass with secret smiles just for each other. In the pit of my stomach I knew something was wrong. I got the call I had been dreading. Only months after he said he had about a year he was found on the floor in his bedroom. He was alone; his maid found him, his wife at the time abandoned him for the night. This is the first time I have really discussed this with anyone. It would be difficult to explain why I live for the beach without revealing this. He spent most of the day in the hospital. The call came from my mom. She and my dad were still at the beach. She didn’t have to say much but I knew.
They were coming home. I met them at home. My mom told me that after they got the call my dad was looking out the hotel window, I can almost see the hotel-it mimics every hotel on the coast with reprints of the ocean and lighthouses only a cheap representation of what is outside your door. Looking out the hotel window he was watching the gray waves mirror the sky. Watching them crash along the shore. A storm had just broken leaving the water and sky looking tormented mirroring the agony my dad must be feeling. He saw a break in the clouds. A break in the clouds when the sky is gray is something quite magical isn’t it? The gray lights up and casts a magically eerie glow. The light shines brightest at the edge of the opening. A sphere of light illuminates the water below. There is a mirror of light and dark, a patch of blue surrounded by gray, nothing short of spiritual. I cannot deny that I feel something akin to faith. Can you deny a God lives here? Poseidon, Allah, God, Buddah? It is enough to know something is there. My dad watched this shaft of light; “that’s my dad, he’s up there” he said.
Every time I see a break in the clouds I remember. The first time I went back after his passing was difficult for me. I had always loved the beach; I have always felt something there. This was the first time I had felt that faith. I was weighed down and resistant to this feeling that was invading me, that had my stomach churning. Then I saw a break in the clouds and felt a sense of peace wash over me. I accepted that Nature cannot only be beautiful, peaceful, a playground, but it can be your church and it can be your faith. At the beach, more than any other place in Nature, I have this feeling. While I feel it in the deep damp shadowed forest the ocean continues to tug at me. It draws me. There, more than anywhere, I remember, “[S]He’s there”.
