I walked away from the bonfire, toward the bay, toward the horizon, except there’s no horizon after dark. My rain boots crunched and squished along the rocks and shells and sand, and as I walked further out, sank a bit with each step. This was sand rarely exposed to air. I walked among pools of water, kelp, seaweed, live oysters, their shells locked tight, starfish plump and vulnerable, even one with each of its five arms separated from its soft underbelly. That one wasn’t moving at all.
I’m not much of a marine biologist. Rocks always look so much prettier in the water, polished almost; every time as a kid I’d take some home I’d end up disappointed by the dull matte finish of their reality. I was not the kid who turned over rocks to see what would scurry out. I don’t like cracking exoskeletons to get at flesh. I usually prefer to avoid things that look as ugly as the things that lurk underwater, things that get twisted up with sea grasses and the colorful remnants of death and decay.
Last night I was as exposed as the creatures surprised by the beam of my headlamp. Parts of me that I’ve always kept underwater floated to the surface. I wondered if I’d step into a sink hole, be pulled under, into … what? The underworld? But I was already in my underworld, so I kept going. Me and the hard-shelled wonders and the ones who have no shell at all, vulnerable to every bird, dog, and human to venture out this far.
Odd for me, but I was warm even as it began to rain. When I returned to the shore, I turned off the headlamp and walked in darkness for a bit. Of course, it wasn’t true darkness. Across the bay came the double twinkly brightness of a small town with its lights reflecting on the water. It looked like an impossible-to-capture nighttime photo, less like something real providing the backdrop to my walk.
For the first time in a long time, I felt as if there was enough. Enough for me. Enough in this lifetime. Enough in this moment. No grasping, no need for something that was or was not going to happen. The world is abundant. There is wind and rain and sand and beach and shells and twinkling lights across the water. I was temporarily alone, which is rare; all three of us in three separate places. One day I will live alone – it will be far more permanent. My son will visit – of this I have no doubt, as I’ve done right enough by him that he won’t need to flee. I will outlive my husband, as most wives do. But perhaps even then there will be enough. All my ugly underwater bits become exposed, then slowly submerge under the dark weight of the water that usually keeps them hidden and nourished.
Twinkling lights from the distant shore gleamed their promise, yet didn’t prevent something from tugging apart that poor starfish, limb after limb after limb after limb after limb. I don’t know what will be torn from me, or what will drift away if I stop chasing after it in my usual habit of fear. I have everything I need. And even then without a few bits, I’ll have a new everything. And it will be sufficient.
Step gently. It was low tide for all of us.