Where the Ocean Takes Over the Quiet

Turns out there were a couple of things that I seem to have forgotten about sunrise at the ocean.  Maybe not as much forgot but maybe things I simply had taken for granite since I have experienced them so many times.  Either way, 55 days into my new chapter, I wanted to share some words about the ocean that I somehow had missed.  The first is that transition from the world to the beach that happens on the walk from the car to the ocean.  This stretch of ocean is not new to me, I have take this walk more times than i can count over the 25 years Bride and I lived here, but it does not feel the same now.  

When I get out of my car, the sounds of the world exist.  Rumbling of cars driving around, the hum of air conditioners, the honking of horns, or maybe the screaming of a siren.  The pitter patter of runners, joggers and walkers and occasionally the dude who asks ya for a few bucks.  There is like a 50 foot stretch on the walk to the ocean in which the sounds of the world start to die down. They are slowly being drowned out by the sound of the ocean. 

I love that transition almost as much as the sunrise.  In those few feet, the transition is also working on my mind, my mood, and I slowly transition to the anticipation of seeing my old friend, the Atlantic.  The drowning out of the day to day of things, and the roaring up of the ocean.  It is almost like two dimmer switches operating in tandem, one going down and the other going up in perfect synchronicity.  Like an emergency generator slewing its phase to  that of the power grid before seamlessly switching back when power is restored.  I had forgotten how much I loved that short bit of the walk.

The spot I went this morning had a huge tidal pool between me and the ocean.  They are funny, and I have no idea how they form.  I am sure the google could answer that for me but sometimes I simply don’t need to know.  Sometimes they are inches deep, other times feet deep.  Today was about 18 inches, almost getting my cargo shorts wet as I walked through.  They are also very cold, I guess that is more from the overnight and the lack of connection to the warm water of the ocean.  The contrast hits harder than I remember. 

It is similar to the feeling of the sand in the morning after a rain.  The sand is cold and  mostly hardened, not the dry warm sand of the day.  I had also forgotten what a natural abrasive the beach can be.  A daily walk on the beach would not doubt save folks thousands of dollars of grinding and polishing our heels and feet before pedicures, which I am getting another one of while I am here.    

Even in winter the water here is always pretty warm, a product of the gulf stream zipping by no doubt.  The first day I was here I sat up on the dry sand, I didn’t even have a towel yet.  I resolved that by immediately buying a folding chair, like the ones at a tailgating party.  I also bought a beach towel, just in case.  Sunday and today I sat in that chair in the surf, both days the tide was coming in.  Generally I would wait until the water was deep enough to hit my butt before sliding back a bit.  Not wanting to be soaking wet, I slid back when it got half way up my calf.

There is absolute relentlessness to the tides, on the way in, it churns pebbles, sea shells and coral into sand.  On the way out, dragging seaweed, kelp and shit dumbasses leave on the beach back into the ocean.  A constant cleansing, grinding up of what was and a renewal of the beach itself by depositing new life.  And the rats with wings keeping all that in balance, I watched this morning as one snatched a small crab up and ate it.

I was surprised how different the transition from the noise of the world to the sound of the ocean hit on these first couple of days.  This beach holds more than sand and ocean for me.  Bride and I actually got remarried here at 20 years in.  There are a lot of memories here for me.  Ya can’t spend that long in a place without it holding pieces of life that ya can’t quite set down.  It was a reminder that the world has not slowed down a bit.  People are still driving too fast, worrying about meaningless things, going to meetings that feel important in the moment, and seem irrelevant five minutes later. 

And I am still in it, doing the dang things that just feel different now.  But somewhere in that walk, there is a subtle shift.  The noise fades just enough, just enough for me to actually feel what’s hidden there.  It’s not louder, just clearer.  Grief has not really shown up for me when everything is loud.  It shows up in that 50 foot window, when things finally get quiet enough that I can’t avoid it. 

And what I am realizing is that I can’t live in either place all the time.  The noise lets me function in the world, and the quiet allows the space to feel all the feels.  That short walk is where both exist at the same time.  It feels like the closest to balancing all of this I have found so far.  Not fixing anything, not escaping anything, just learning how to move between the two in a way that might become manageable.  Kinda like my own two dimmer switches trying to stay in sync, even when the system underneath is rebelling against syncing up.

I also noticed how the tidal pool this morning felt a bit like my grief.  The tidal pools are disconnected from the whole, left behind as the tide goes back to its normal place.  Some are shallow, some are deeper than we expect in the dark, and they are always colder.  That cold hits hard and lingers as we wade through.  Sure, I could have probably walked around it, maybe even picked a different spot on the beach to avoid it, but sooner or later you just have to step on in, without overthinking it.  I don’t understand why some moments hit harder than others or why the water is colder in some areas than in others.  I don’t need a clear explanation for them, how they form or why they stick around or move, I simply accept that they do.

The abrasion bit, that one is real too.  The whole thing is wearing me down in slow, almost unnoticeable ways.  Or maybe not wearing me down as much as forming me into something new. Not anything catastrophic or all at once, just a constant knocking off of the edges and maybe even a bit of polishing.  The routines, the memories, and all the little mundane things that used to be automatic now seem to take more effort than before, all the history always popping in to remind me of my loss.  In some ways I know it’s not all bad, this is a part of the ride for all of us. 

That does not mean it does not suck, and it does not mean we don’t have to keep moving forward.  The friction some days feels like 36 grit on an angle grinder, just whacking away at it all.  Other days it feels like the methodicalness of 1600 grit on a whetstone with a chisel or block plane blade.  Not sure where beach sand lives on the grit scale but I know it is my favorite of grits.  Even walking on partially crushed up shells, I keep moving forward but I am aware of every step.   

The ocean does not rush it, and I am starting to see that I don’t need to either.  The dimmers are still there, one going up and the other going down, just not moving together the way they used to.  And ya know what, Im starting to think that’s not something I need to fix.  Maybe I just need to keep writing my three things, keep taking that walk, and let it find its own rhythm. 

And, all of this sucks.