Finding Peace and Purpose Beside The Woman of the Sea
Reflections on love, understanding, acceptance, and mortality
Our tears taste like the ocean. When we die, the water of our bodies makes its way back to the sea. The tide is a mixing of remains. The movement of the waves contains the memory of every ancient creature that swam, crawled, walked, ran, flew, or loved.
When you swim in the ocean, you’re swimming with your grandparents and the dog from your childhood. You’re swimming with Alexander the Great and Jesus and a flock of pterodactyls. The water is heavy, and it mixes into the air so you end up inhaling the history of the world with every breath.
My wife refers to the Pacific as “hers.” She speaks Spanish. She refers to it as “sea” and I know better than to challenge her. The word she uses is “mar.”
Mi mar.
Her father was in the Navy. They lived in a small house in Callao. At the edge of Callao, there is a place called “La Punta.” It’s where the land stretches out into the Pacific Ocean, and no matter where you look, there is nothing but endless water as far as you can see.
It’s intimidating and captivating. The ocean is as terrifying as it is compelling. The haunting depths so dark and deep await us. They represent death and immortality and home.
My wife told me how she took swimming classes at the beach. The beach at La Punta is made of stones. My daughters looked at them and squealed with delight, “These are perfect rocks for painting!”
It made me laugh and remember the times we went to the beach and my daughters filled my pockets with precious rocks to the point where I had to hold my shorts at the waist to keep them from falling down.
Along the shore of my wife’s mar, the human constructions are in an accelerated state of decay. The salt eats into the metal. It weathers the wood. The smell of our ancestors sinks into your bones. The sweet scent hangs in the atmosphere as a gentle reminder of all that ever was.
The ocean is an indomitable mass of contradictions.
I enjoy observing the people who live beside the sea, how they walk. How they are deliberate. I watched a man push his boat from the shore into the waves. When the water came up, he pushed with all his might. When the water retreated he waited patiently for the waves to return. This behavior was as involuntary as drawing breath. He’d learned on a fundamental level that you cannot resist the power of the water, you must form yourself to fit it. You must flow.
My wife is from the sea. When we were first dating she took me to La Punta. She had a blue bikini with yellow trim. She wore a lightweight wrap. The wrap was white with blue seashells. The men who drove the buses and the taxis that took us to the ocean always parted for her. They gestured where she should sit with exaggerated kindness.
The filthiness of the city could not stain her. The oil and dirt of the road scampered away. She emerged pure from the waves like a newborn.
Everyone who crossed her path showed deference for the woman of the sea.
The beach with the stones belonged to her. The waves were her waves. The salt that collected in the corners of our eyes after an afternoon spent taking the sun, was her salt, her body. I was hers.
In 2009, I took my wife from the ocean and moved to Wisconsin. It doesn’t seem like it could have worked. How can you take a woman from the sea to the land?
But I too am a water creature. I’m a Pisces. I’m drawn to the rivers. In my childhood, I used to ride to the wagon bridge and meet my friends and we would swim until the fireflies began to dance in the reeds along the shore.
My wife is a Capricorn, like my mother. My wife’s mother is a Pisces, like me. One day all our water will mix together in the waves.
I’m a freshwater fish. Water surrounds me. In the summer it is the lakes and rivers, in the winter it is snow. I must have my hands on water every day. In the evenings, I hold my wife, the woman of the sea.
“Let’s go to the beach,” I said. For a moment, my wife’s eyes lit up in delight, and then they crashed because she remembered that she is far from home.
“There’s no ocean here, therefore there is no beach.”
So I took her to a lake, but a lake is not the ocean. There is no smell of salt. There is not that ambiance of impending eternity. The waves don’t rise up and clean the shore, so you get green mold and mud that gets between your toes. The smell is of earth, not forever. It’s more purgatory than heaven.
“I want a beach made of stone.”
Next, I took her to a river. This she liked better because a river moves. There’s power there. There’s the same sort of danger. A river is fun, but you have to respect a river. You have to flow with the current. It’s futile to resist.
She liked the river better, but it still wasn’t enough.
Finally, I took her to Lake Superior, and I saw the angst evaporate into the air. It wasn’t quite the ocean, but she could look upon Lake Superior and hear the echo of the sea. It stretches on forever. The shore, in some places, was covered with stones.
Our children picked those stones and filled my pockets and I waddled like a penguin back to the car. Our worlds had overlapped, like water gently brushing up against the shore. It was enough to bring contentment to the woman of the sea.
I’ve spent my life in canoes and on rivers. I know how to navigate the dangers of a freshwater river, but the ocean still intimidates me. You have to be wary of a riptide. The sea can appear calm, but it has more tricks than you can learn in a lifetime. Fortunately, our ancestors are with us to pass on their sacred knowledge in the form of whispering wind.
My wife is as familiar with the ocean’s tricks as she is her own shadow. I was born in the highlands where the water comes as rain and begins its long journey back to the point of origin. My wife is from the sea.
Far from shore, where no people go, the midday sun evaporates the water and leaves the salt behind. This water travels in the air, like a woman in an airplane, and rains down upon the land on its way back to the sea.
I’m a water creature. I traveled the rivers to the ocean and met a woman there. Together we took to the air and returned to my home. One day, I expect the rivers I love so dearly will take us to the end of land, and we’ll crash in the waves together. Then we’ll evaporate into the heavens and float among the clouds and rain down upon the highlands and continue that cycle forever until the end of this world.
The thought brings me peace.
I listen to the crashing of the waves and I am not afraid.
“I'd rather Be Writing” exists because of your generous support. If you have the means please consider upgrading to a paid sponsorship. I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year. I'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.
My CoSchedule referral link
Here’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).
I really, really love this. I mean really. From the Woman of the Sea to the crashing waves, rain travelling through air, to the stones, to the boat, all of it takes me on a journey of ancient tides and present day miracles of nature. I am enamored of your relationships with your wife, your children, your time and place. When you write about the sea you seem so grounded.
A perfect Valentine read! Thank you!