I’ve paddled out. I’m through the break, through the kelp, and into peace. Just waiting. Sunset. The waves soak up the purples, oranges, and pinks of the sky. The desolate sand only bears a single line of footprints leading into the ocean, and an empty soda can half buried in the sand. It’ll be a while for the next set to come. In the distance the water seems to shimmer. I lie down on my board. Rest my head on my crossed arms. Goosebumps quickly form on my bare skin. Even through the wetsuit, I can feel myself shivering. I sit. Waiting for my body to numb. I wonder if the next set will be that perfect set. Could God please make it a perfect set?
As the water splashes over my bare toes, I close my eyes, and imagine myself with my son. He is now living with another family. He has been gone for over four months. Water surrounding me, my thoughts turn to him, and to the life that could have been. I do not think of this possible life with pleasure, rather a slight contempt for my own ignorance. I lay here, hating myself for thinking it would never happen to me. Thinking I was unstoppable. A superhero in my own little world; untouchable.
My heart pounds throughout my entire body. I feel the pulse by my temples, in my chest, through my arms and wrists. I hear the pounding of the waves down the coast, and I remember the heartbeat of a child so small echoing inside my body, emulating my own heartbeat; I breathe in the memory. As I lie there, I breathe in each memory as it comes, concentrating on it for that moment, and then releasing it.
Certain memories I would love to forget. As I dip my hands in and out of the water, I remember that day, that loathsome day when I had to give him up. That day I held him in my arms for the last time, kissed him for the last time, and watched him sleep so peacefully by me as I signed the papers relinquishing my very right to be a mother. His mother. I remember my hand shaking so terribly that it took me five minutes just to sign my own name. Every part of me telling my hand to stop, but somehow finding the willpower to touch pen to paper. Giving the life I wanted to someone else.
Tears stream down my face and into the ocean. The two salt waters of my life finally combine. Again, just like the rest of my memories, I breathe it back out. My arms lay inert in the water, just hanging underneath the surface. My whole body seems to be immobile. My mind going back and forth between memories of my life before and after my child. However, it keeps coming back to one thought: my child remains with his new family.
What I realize as I lay here, so far away from my son and the rest of the world, is that even though I can’t see him in person everyday, I can still feel him in my heart. Perhaps it’s not the act of seeing that makes the future seem gratifying, maybe it’s just remembering. Possibly all I have to do is love him, even if he can’t know to love me in return.
I hear the roar of the waves coming closer to me now. I sit up. Turn my board. Look over my shoulder. A wave. The perfect wave. I paddle; I paddle as hard as I can. I feel myself rising with it.
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