Down to the water

A. and I went to Wales. I was curious to see the country of my ancestors, maybe more so than some people, due to my adoption. I’ve never seen a blood relative. Would I spot a resemblance? Maybe I was after something even more subtle, like a feeling, a sentiment, a vibe. It was my first trip to another continent, and I was happy to be doing it with someone I loved.

We camped in St. David’s, a small, old city on the coast. It rained quite a bit, but that added to the enchanted quality. We met an ancient man in a pub, who indulged us and spoke Welsh. It sounded incredibly foreign, elfin, something straight out of Middle Earth.

On our last night in St. David’s, we walked down toward the water. There’s a scene there that hangs in my mind’s museum, a random moment that fits a frame, a strong composition, dark, with painterly points of light. The last rays of the sunset are coming over the water, a thin, magenta line merging into the blue-black above. Stars hang overhead, familiar shapes from home. The road slopes downward toward the water. There is a sense of openness, with the land slanting away, the stars drawing our eyes upward. I don’t know why my mind’s shutter opened and closed around this moment, but there it is. We were probably holding hands. I hope so.

We never walked all the way down to the water. I remember wanting to. We probably had an early bus to catch the next morning. Something practical like that. We turned around and walked back to our campsite, which was nothing more than a soggy field, really.

A. and I came close—became close--in many ways. Lots of verbal riffing, cooking shared meals in our bright kitchen. Poetry readings. Tending our small yard. Travel. We had an ease with each other: two language mavens with pretty good comic timing. From the outside, our relationship looked idyllic, carefree. It felt that way to me, for quite a while, too.

There was, however, some reluctance, some insurmountable wall, some steps too far. I remember her declaring, in a matter-of-fact way, that she never wanted to be married. "Okay," I replied. She followed up with, "I don't want to have kids." "Okay," I repeated. Looking back, I'm not sure if I was scared or relieved. I remember just checking off those question on a mental list. Never mind that I didn't really consider my feelings on either of those subjects. If I had, I would have found fear and curiosity, I'm sure. I didn't have the words at the time. I've learned that issues of magnitude demand questions, not statements and acquiescence. Furthermore, statements may have varying half-lives: I found out a couple of years later that she did marry. Someone else, of course.

Carefree becomes an insidious trap. What is not an advance, a step forward, becomes a retreat. Without plumbing of emotional depths, there is backward movement, even when one appears to be still.

I'm thinking now of that visual illusion that happens when running through an advancing or retreating tide. I want to remind myself to go to the water, all the way down, to look up and out, to find the words in these moments and not years later, as in this blog I humbly send out, a scrawl in a wax-sealed bottle, bobbing in a cyber surf.