Revisiting "Attachments" - A "My Rhode Island Summer Story Contest 2010" Finalist

In the Spring of 2010 Lila Delman Real Estate ran a story contest on Facebook entitled "My Rhode Island Summer".  Below is one of the finalists' essays, Attachments.  May it keep you warm on this winter day.

Attachments

By Mary Stoner

Photo by Coleen Huggins Bonnell

All of my childhood, gray-mist memories include one common facet, the sea. I was born on an island which made escaping the water impossible. I wiled away the summers of my youth on Easton’s Beach where I swam through the white foam surf and dug thorny creatures from the wet sand. Daily I ran along the cliff walk, a winding path that follows the Atlantic’s rocky coast, and I was married in a small, Victorian chapel that sends evening shadows across Narraganset Bay. Yet only recently have I begun to understand the importance of my communion with the salt sea, and why I am drawn to it like a helpless ship to a lodestone rock.

I share a strange relationship with the ocean. It is an umbilical connection that cannot be broken. If I stay away too long, the cord snaps me back forcing a sort of jealous baptism by salt. This summer, the bond between us tightened. Through an inexplicable series of sensory fragments, I became keenly aware of the depth of the sea’s continued influence on my life. . . .
This summer I became aware of my children’s attachment to the sea. As they stood on the shore half naked and “brown as berries” under a haze-covered sun, they shed their anxieties and turned tall, tan, and wiser. They kicked through the hot-cold, coarse sand and shivered at the tangy taste of warm salt on their arms. They drifted about as aimlessly as the transparent jelly fish that rainbowed the ocean’s surface. . . .

This summer I became more aware of the sea’s very essence. I watched tons of slimy, green-black lobsters gurgle and bubble in chaotic unity on the docks. Fishermen anchored close by carelessly strung bait by jabbing sharp stringers through yellow cod eyes that turned to tears. Snails, bloated pink and pebbly, jutted from glassy brown shells. All of these pierced my senses while the sea shimmered beneath weathered slats. . . .

This summer I became painfully aware of my own dormant emotions. I dared to swim back . . . . Undulating gently on a board rippled thick with wax, I faced an “ancient god” of the sea. (What mystical powers dawn’s soft swells have!) We tried in tandem to remember a rhythm long forgotten, but the sea smoothed its skirts and ignored us. Those strange kisses, once childhood memories, are now forbidden pleasures. We laughed until liquid crimson lined the horizon. . . . “Red at night, [my] delight”. . . .
Summer’s fresh images have not yet slipped into sweet, sea-infused memories, and I feel the need to return. I understand now that the sea is the salt of my blood. Though I try, I cannot shake this awareness, and the cord chokes tears into my eyes.