"Find a happy place, find a happy place, find a happy place."
~Peach in Finding Nemo
When I was growing up, there was this beach about a mile from our house: very rocky, rough on the feet. There were big boulders, covered with slippery seaweed and barnacles, which were rougher still on the feet. And you could find beach glass and horseshoe crabs and these special dark reddish brown rocks. When you got the rocks wet and rubbed them together, the water on them turned that same dark reddish brown color, like rust or dried blood. When we were little, my brother and I used to paint our faces with them: war paint. And thus, our politically (and no doubt, scientifically) incorrect name for them: Indian rocks.
If you were lucky, after a hurricane or just a really big storm, you'd find the body of some poor little sand shark washed up on the rocky shore. Sharks in the water! It made the beach seem exotic and dangerous. Like when it got so cold one winter that the water froze and huge chunks of ice, ten, fifteen feet high, littered the sand; it was like traveling to Antarctica a mile from your house.
When I first moved to that house a mile from the beach, I put a note in one of my dad's used wine bottles, looking for a friend. It floated down maybe a hundred yards before another girl my age pulled it out. We were best friends for a while, then we drifted apart. She found me again through the Internet. She's married for the second time now and has two girls, whose eyes look just like hers when she was young like that.
One year, after I'd graduated from high school and left, I came back for a visit and went walking on the beach after dark with a friend. We climbed down these old wooden steps that ended on a jumble of boulders, and he grabbed my hand to steady me as I jumped down off the rocks. The tide was right, so we could walk on the wet sand, instead of the stones, and we left luminous footprints behind us. He said it was the moon jellyfish, but it was so beautiful, it was like magic. How could that be jellyfish? Moments like that are as close as I get not just to believing in God, but feeling like I am touching God. And we sat on a rock and talked and skipped stones off the waves. We had to listen for the "plunk" because we couldn't actually see them skipping. Now, did that actually happen? Or is that just the way I want to remember where the luminous footprints led us?
The real beach and the beach in my mind blend. The memories and the ideal blend. And everything is softly breathing water and polished stones and salty cleansing air, and I'm serene.
