if you do even if you don't

The shore must weary of the sea, but wear it like a trophy wife, lovely and sibilant, commiserating with her canyon cousins, supernally cut by the maddening routine of rivers and wind. You would have to be cruel to stand on the shore and smile, toss pebbles into the surf that the water will only toss back at her. Scatter broken bottles upon the sand, and come back years later to frosted glass. Set bonfires on her back and let the ocean put them out.

In the dentist’s chair this morning, I thought about oceans and their unrelenting volume. I remembered nights sleeping on the sand and unable to filter pearls from that ever present noise. Even with a drill inside my head, the sound from the memory alone washed out all thought but the thought of the sea. There is no room in a marriage to the sea but the sea and the sea and the sea. He asked me if it hurt.

We are putting our children through an oceanic winter, and throwing them into the tide until they are worn smooth and clouded and seraphic. They are too young to learn when you should stand in the surf and shout or kneel in the sand and say, you’re just going through a rough time, it will be okay. The ugly side of human nature is still human in its nature.

But there is also forgiveness in the water, and yes there is salt, but when you find a pool sheltered from the wind and the spray with the light just right, there is reflection. There’s that, and an abundance of color and coolness and the comfort of routine. In the dental chair, I crossed my legs, and the broken one will still send a sharp jab of pain if I touch it just right, and it made me remember how fond we can grow of habit. I realized I somehow missed the consistency of those broken moments dedicated to healing. Waking up in suffering, hobbling down the stairs, making coffee while gathering the ice pack and the ibuprofen and towel, scoring the vicodin. Counting the moments until the tide ebbed, because it always will if you give it half a chance, and it always will even if you don’t.

Comments

matt said…
this makes me think of oceans of memory, and how time has this habit of frosting those over to, in our glassy-eyed recollections. i'm quite certain i still don't know when to "stand in the surf and shout or kneel in the sand and say, you’re just going through a rough time, it will be okay," but then neither do any of my students seem to know any better, either, so maybe if we're all equally lost, it doesn't count as lost? i'm rambling about nothing, maybe.

or, you know, i could just say i'm glad it was you at the dentist's, and not me. (how's your face / mouth, and how is that leg these days?)
matt said…
err, too - not to. dammit, there's never enough coffee first thing.
scott said…
Personification makes bastards of us all. How could we be so cruel? The roads. The firewood. The poor, poor underwear.

Hello, Brando[n].
Summer said…
You know I love it when you write about the ocean. And I love the ocean even when you don't.
Brandon said…
matt, my face and my leg are doing great. they're tied at the hip.

scott, remember when underwear was referred to as small clothes? now that was cruel.

summer, every time i see the ocean, i wave.
eclectic said…
There’s ... an abundance of color and coolness and the comfort of routine. ...[I]t made me remember how fond we can grow of habit. Ugh. These are familiar sentiments for me, ones I wish I didn't understand.

Isn't this what marriage is all about: "I do, even when I don't."? And what a pain in the shore that can be?
Brandon said…
shari, i do especially when i don't. but a pain in the shore is still the shore, i suppose.
Kerri Anne said…
These were lovely words to dive into this evening. Much lovelier than diving into the actual ocean would be. Which is, in fact, something I've tried on this very night years ago, and would heartily recommend, if not for the freezing extremities.

Here's to a 2012 both unrelenting in volume (of awesomeness) and forgiveness.

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