It often took us until 3pm to get down to the beach. The intensity of the day waned. I was restless to touch the ocean.
The hours between 3 and 5 pm near the Nicaraguan ocean are some of my favourite.
We would get into the truck, bump down the rocky road, and pull onto the sand. Sometimes I would walk. The air was just perfect. Warm. Barely clothed, yet still felt wholly wrapped in something. Butterflies often led the way. The monkeys made quiet throaty sounds from high above.
Once there the kids, this time, would mostly just run straight in. This was our fifth time visiting with them. Visits before there was hesitancy and fear at times as just when they got comfortable, a wave would win, or a jellyfish would warn. Those things happened this time, but somehow they all had come to an understanding. My eldest, over the years preceding was leaning towards a bit of anxiety. This was an uneasy puzzle to my husband and I as it wasn’t something familiar to either of us and we didn’t understand it or where it was coming from. In the ocean this year though, she fell back to herself. She played for hours, wanted to keep walking further and further out, yelled at the waves, dove under, jumped through, marched out to show me where the tentacle landed and then ran back in. She was free, she was in control, I could have watched her for hours. I exhaled that bringing her here was doing what I hoped it would.
My youngest, marches to her own music. She is slight. She yearns deeply for love and acceptance and if she senses them out of reach she can twist and turn with grief and without peace. She would have wandered right into the middle of the Pacific I think. There was no consideration of the difference in the size and power of her will and that of the water’s. Yet, she was always the first to tire of the ocean and end up on the sand; completely by herself, with hands and feet and thoughts digging and digging and digging. Every day. There she would be, just digging and murmuring at the ocean’s edge. My instinct was always to go to her – she must be sad being alone over there while we are all out here. But that was never the case. I don’t know what that sand did for her but whenever I walked over there she was light and at utter ease.
Once our needs were met we would eventually wander out and away from the ocean. The girls would find some shade and start a game of some sort together. Scott would resume his book. And I would stay at the water’s edge, spread my towel, in the now mellow sun, and be. I love so many things about our visits to Nicaragua, but for some reason, I can’t get the feeling of this specific time out of my head now.
Lying in the sand. Feet dug into the slightly more firm, cool sand. Hair salty, limbs tanned, lying near naked with no judgement, feeling so equally fully alive and at rest. The ocean and sun and birds there. I would read. Fiction. I would marvel at how the words were written so so long ago but that the author was describing my reality. I would get lost in a character and relate. I would daydream and dream and think and release. I haven’t been able to pick up a book since leaving Nicaragua because I’m struggling to understand how to get lost in one without that feeling of warmth and sensuality on my body and total expanse in my mind.
The sun would eventually just slip low enough and the ocean would calm just the faintest bit and then one of them would walk down to me. Maddy, glistening in sand from each strand of her long, wavy hair down to her completely obscured toe nails, might come down and wonder what I’d like from her restaurant. Isla, thoughtful and emerging and still wanting to be so much like her mother, which I know is fleeting now, which both stirs dread and excitement in me as I know she can, in fact, be so much more, might come down and lay her towel beside mine and just try to absorb what it was I was. Or, Scott might come down. Just come down to see if I had had my fill of me. Sometimes it seems that his entire desire on this earth is to make sure I get my fill of me. I have yet to find the words to give this gesture and pursuit justice. He didn’t care what the answer was when he came down to check, as he could wait.
But it would be time. We would shake off and walk over to our friend’s hut. It would be near 5pm. He would share food and drink with us and we would all share smiles and laughs. We would learn such stories of his family’s life. How can that be? And then we would pack in the truck and bump back home.
Nicaragua, 3 to 5pm.
