just like me
Day 91 of my 100-day essayette adventure
tonight’s essay is a revision from a prompted piece I worked on with my writers group.
When I’m six and living in Hawaii, the place where both my sisters will be born within eleven months, where my mother learns to love muumuus, and my father will be kicked out of Bible College for hiding his previous marriage, I am playing quietly on the beach at Hanauma Bay.
I am digging my toes into the sand and watching them disappear, then pulling them back up like little rising volcanoes. I’m listening to the sighing waves. I’m watching my baby sisters play on a blanket.
I am dreaming and far away as I watch the blue water, when my father comes up suddenly, startling me. He picks me up in his faux-playful, yet don’t you dare act like you don’t like it way. He says something I can’t hear and carries me into and through the water. I can feel the waves on me as he holds me, making his way out to a rock that sits near the line of the bay.
He puts me down, and the edge is sharp, volcanic, jagged. I’m just far enough away from the shore that it feels wrong, scary, as if maybe I could slip into the sea accidentally and drop before anyone would notice, down past the reef, towards some dark blue place we all know.
My father puts on a snorkel and some diving gloves, and he goes under the water. I can just see the shape of his arms, the wide strokes taking him towards a section of the reef. I remember clutching the dark rock with my toes, using them like fingers, and wrapping my arms around my legs as I tried not to move too much. It wasn’t long before I saw him coming back to the surface; he was bringing up something dark, a black, shiny sea urchin, its spines were swirling and twirling.
Don’t touch it or you’ll get hurt, he says as he sat it down next to me.
Instinctively, I clutch my body to make it smaller. I hold very still. I hold my breath. Because I don’t know why he’s brought me out to a place where I could get hurt. Where the edges are sharp. Where I have to hold so still. I’m always holding still. So young and so still and so quiet, all of the time. Like a small, obedient stone awkwardly dressed up as a child.
He always pretends he won’t get upset, he won’t hurt anyone, and then he does. He pushes in, until we’re all of us, my mother and my sisters and I, toppling like pebbles, scratching out over an edge he has sent us off of, an edge we never saw coming.
My heart tightens and my throat closes as I watch the urchin spinning. I imagine it’s gasping, and I hate him for thinking I’d want this. That I’d want him to bring this up from the safety of the ocean, simply for me to look at it. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t see that it can’t breathe. That it’s suffering, and that it belongs somewhere else.
Just like me.
This is Day 91 of my 100-day essayette adventure!
If you’d like to support my caffeine intake as we tallyho on this adventure, all forms of support are appreciated!
For anyone new here, please excuse any grammatical errors over the next few months.
100 days of writing means I write, and I let go, and then…I do it all over again — all while caring for two small humans, a small nervous white dog, and a plethora of cats.
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Would you like to join an adventurous book club?
We are beginning by reading Walking in This World by Julia Cameron.
The group meets starting October 19th, from 6-7:30 pm CST for 12 weeks (taking off for Thanksgiving and Christmas.)
We will read one chapter a week together, discuss, and work on the writing tasks as a group (on Zoom). The only homework is to read one chapter a week!
Once I get an idea of interest and confirm that this day and time works for the majority (there’s a spot on the link to suggest a different day and time), I’ll create a registration page for those who wish to register. It will be open to any paid subscribers.
If you’re interested, let me know here, and we will see how it all shakes out!
Ouch. And that image!
Iam pondering on all your thoughts! Love you Sarah!