Ocean (an imagined memory)

We take the bus, from Quincy Center all the way out to Nantasket. I’m fifteen months old, still a toddler. My mother is nineteen years old, still a teenager. When we arrive at the beach, my mother undresses me down to my bathing suit, then busies herself spreading out the blanket, unpacking the towels and sand toys, putting on her sunglasses.  When she turns around to check on me, I’m gone…

I hear a voice, a beautiful, beckoning, irresistible voice. It seems to come from the ocean, way out where the water touches the sky. But it also seems to come from inside my head. The voice is like my mother’s — female, loving, insistent — but it‘s both closer and more distant than hers. The voice calls me by some name that is deeply mine, but is not “Karen.” It calls and calls. I want to find this voice.

Above me, the gulls are swooping and screaming. But I don’t listen to them. Ahead of me, the waves are crashing against the sand, churning up foam, then dragging pebbles and bits of shell away from the beach. I’m not afraid. I’ve never been to the ocean before, but I know I belong here. I’m sure of my desire: that voice…

I wade into the water on stubby legs. Almost immediately, I’m knocked over and the undertow begins to pull at me. I’m flailing, gasping, choking. I feel my mother’s arms before I see her face or hear her cries. She yanks me out of the water, holds me to her breasts, says my name over and over. I sputter, spitting out the unfamiliar salty water, and rub my eyes with little fists. My mother carries me back to the blanket. I feel her heart beating fast under her bathing suit. She’s shaking, and when she sits down, she doesn’t let me go.

My heart is beating fast too, but not with fear — with excitement. I begin to squirm and, finally, she releases me. She dries me off with a towel. Then, thinking that I need to be distracted, she begins to unpack our lunch. But when she looks up, I’m gone. I’ve run down to the sea again.

My mother catches me, but this time we go into the water together. She’s seen something in my face, some rapture which she recognizes and doesn’t try to fight. She carries me past the place where the waves are breaking and lays me on my back. I know instinctively that I must lie still. I relax into the water and float like a cork…
The voice is all around me. I’m tiny, bobbing alone on the surface of the sea. But at the same time, I’m as big as the ocean itself.