Above photo: Jeremy Bishop, unsplash.com

Written 02.25.07 in Vieques, Puerto Rico, for my Dad

Mending from the clutches of fever and flu

That comes in waves

Not unlike the Atlantic below

My body

Crash slap whip of sea foam and spiral current

Heat and salty coating

Sweat a cleansing

Rushing out from my own sea

Enough perhaps to meet the one beyond my balcony

Divided merely

By the slip

Of sliding glass door that keeps me from all things

Sun sky

The play of lizards on the path

And the palm trees that can’t go grow in New York; I might miss them especially.

But most of all

My children who need me well

So we may play in the ocean,

We’ve traveled so far for this.

Evelyn comes each day to our hotel room number 409,

With her tidy buttoned uniform and her prim black hair pulled into the tightest bun

To change the crisp white sheets so that I may heal more quickly.

She smiles with the deepest wells of sincerity

“How are you,” she asks,

The Bronx streets penetrate her language still, even here, though she moved to this island almost a decade ago.

This woman with hair so shiny black you are reminded of the wet of a seal,

And the eyes with the sort of kindness that can only reflect a lifetime of mothering to many

She sweeps the sand from our terracotta tiled floor that I have not been so lucky to drag in on the soles of my shoes

And says,

“Try to go outside today, the sea will do you good.”

When you hear the click of the door

You cry because you can,

The heat of your body

Turning your skin liquid

You might just dissolve into this bed

Remembered only as a puddle of salty water that never made it back to the sea

Images pool there with the rest of you…

On the crowded ferry that first day

The grandfather who rode across the ocean in the seat next to you

The one with the tapered hairy fingers and thick belly

He held his baby granddaughter so tenderly it made you weep.

That peaceful toddler straddled his protruding abdomen with her fleshy legs

So safely

And nestled into his unshaven neck as if it were a cloud.

That large weathered man rolled her tiny toes gently between his fingers like he was preparing to bake the tiniest of loaves

Then lifted her hands to his lips and kissed each perfect finger one at a time with the utmost of innocence and pure love,

With his eyes closed, breathing her in.

She knew this ritual between them, trusted him entirely, and I watched her body soften and unkink in his arms, teetering on the edge of sleep

But not wanting to as this was even more comforting.

I wouldn’t have wanted to sleep either, knowing that at any moment life might pluck him from us.

His belly like your own father’s, his skin mapped by cigarettes in the same ways yours was.

I wanted to scoop up all the Spanish I could remember like handfuls of thick sand, and plead with him to not smoke, to eat better,

That “this child, and her sister and mother in the seat just in front of you both, who clearly love you just as much as the littlest one, need you more than you know.”

I wanted to tell him how much I missed my dad, who’s birthday I will celebrate silently on this trip, whose beautiful hands I dream about holding and not wanting to let go of, and who held his grandchildren, my sons, with equal quantities of love.

But he wouldn’t heed my pleas either.

My hotel bed is a very generous companion

Receiving my weight without judgment.

It has always been this forgiving…

This silent confessional,

This stage of folly and flesh

It soaks up my losses and doesn’t even float away

Or sink

Until I can neither cry or sweat.

You rise slowly, step gingerly across the cold tile and begin to penetrate the vertical world

Peeling your clothes off your strong body

And letting the shower begin to revive you into the day.

The children and your aunt Ellen await you by the postcard perfect pool,

The sun is prepared to warm you,

And the palm trees shake their heads like rock stars, beckoning you to enter their shade.

Until you can resist no longer.

You venture out to find your family playing Scrabble and begging you to enter the cool blue depths of the water

And you do,

Because even though you are still chilled and somewhat weak, you miss the chime of their laughter and joy at your participation.

The water is icy,

You don’t want it to rise above your breasts,

Foreign, sour words appear on your tongue and you can’t seem to impede their release. You say things like, “It’s cold” and “I should still be in bed” until you are whining too much even for you.

You try a new note. “Let’s go to the beach,” you venture boldly, not sure if you are even ready for such an adventure.

Well, Emmanuel, your youngest, clearly isn’t game.

He prefers the calm, safe immersion into chlorinated water over the more saline, and unpredictable variety.

But before you have barely finished asking the question, your eldest son Aidan is already running in the direction of the shore

Tossing a “see you at the beach!” over his shoulder like a shiny red ball.

The large waves in the distance slice and punch

Washing far up along the deserted sand before sweeping back recklessly to the cobalt plunges.

They loom and crash and sweep everything on the beach back into the ocean like a ferocious claw.

But you have witnessed your eldest son’s excitement slide like an eclipse across his boy-man face

You cannot, will not disappoint this child that still, for now, looks up at you with pride.

And maybe, just maybe, your illness is making you feel vulnerable.

There have been other swimmers in the ocean today after all.

“Mom, should I get the boogie boards?” he asks tentatively.

You watch yourself nod,

Observe your child run up the steps and return soon after with one under each arm, pure joy.

He passes one to you, or that person who looks like you

Though that tinge of fear is a new, unwanted skin

Subtle, something only you would glimpse in your eye’s center, and there

Rushing your blood through labyrinthine pathways of veins

But you accept the board like the gift it is meant to be, take his hand in your free one, and walk in the same rhythm, side by side to the water.

The you that observes is shouting through the glass to wake you up.

She bangs on the protective shield with silent fists and screams again through a mute, strangled throat.

She watches the woman with the long mane of dark curls wade out into the water, and fake a smile.

The son they have both bore is already expertly catching a wave, and the next.

But you do not feel like a surfer today. In fact, you don’t really want to be here in this cold and this alternate heat.

Your bed was such a comfort, cradling your sick body just right. And the quiet…

Now, just the crash of waves, the rumble and roll of such quantities of water that you feel small, tiny.

But here you are, and here you must be, you think

Until you lift your body onto the styrofoam board, exchange glances of encouragement with your son,

Paddle out towards the open sea

Those large waves jeering

And heading your way.

You paddle straight for the biggest one rather than diving under as you have always known to do.

You envision yourself as a goddamn surfing CHAMPION, propelled towards shore inside the scoop of a wave

Yes, you will be in control, you will glide in that hollowed out tube of liquid crystal, you will SAIL

Then, in an instant, you take inventory of where your son is and you notice him cautiously swimming out beyond the reach of the waves and into the safer zone where your heart of heart wants to be.

Still, you need to prove to both of you that you can move past this weakness,

Then retreat back to your warm bed, your book, senseless television, and sleep.

Start kicking your legs as fast as you can,

Your hands gripping the board as you imagine you will ride this wave to shore effortlessly, perched atop its white froth like a goddamn cherry on a cake.

Those puny burps in the ocean in Ft. Lauderdale as a kid did not prepare you for this

Brought under and down

No, you are no surfing superstar,

Instead, your chin is slamming and grazing against the sandy bottom

Your legs now are being whipped unnaturally over your head as the wave passes over, laughing

You have been folded in half

Backwards

And that wave takes its time. It draws out the excruciating crease of spine, the legs suspended in an arc over head.

Thoughts rush

Bodies don’t bend like this

Will you walk again?

The ocean suddenly feels some pity, eases its grip

My folded form is rendered circular.

I am a circle

The shape that housed my growing form inside my mother thirty-seven years ago

That refuge of sacred design

That has calmed me in meditation since I was a young child

The shape of this earth

Giver of life

Reminder that time passes in circles

Moving forward and returning us to the places we started

Moving us forward

And bringing us home

Until I feel gratitude wash over me, through me

Like salt water

My body rises to the surface

As if lifted by a gentle hand

I take a breath

Fill my lungs with that sweet stuff

And more and more

Because even if I may not even crawl

There is still breath

And thought

And the sweetest sound of my son calling,

“Mama,”

An inquiry into my wellness

Knowing intuitively that something has shifted in me,

Something profound

That might be confused with “not well.”

Yet, I have returned to me.

Aidan swims over, concern in his gaze, and says, “You’re bleeding”

“From your chin.”

I hadn’t noticed

Or the sting that is beginning to concentrate there

Or the pinch at my spine

As my body is too busy remembering the

Water wheel

The revisiting of that shock

And that offering to my future

That comes in waves.

The Waterwheel

Travels, stays, (mostly stays these days) explorations of the heart and life.