The sea, again
It has been ages since I last spent so much time in the water. When I was a kid, we used to pack up our things the day after school was over and move to our house near the sea. We would pack up again for the city just a few days before September arrived. By that time, being children and all, we did need a bit of a change of scenery. Now, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
This is the last summer I’m spending at our house near the sea. It will be sold by the end of summer. Until the paperwork is in order, I get to relive a bit of that carefree childhood, albeit in an adult costume and minus a handful of people. And while I’m not expecting endless hours at the beach or evening board games, adventurous bike rides or nights spent stargazing, I am looking forward to some similar peace of mind.
At first glance, things seem to have frozen in time here. You only get a sense of time passing from the people who are around or perhaps those who aren’t. True, new holiday homes have sprung up, mostly concerned with money rather than aesthetics. More Balkan tongues have been added to the linguistic palette, but there is one thing that has always remained constant. The water.
Life in this part of the world centres around the sea. It’s the magic that holds the place together. And it’s the easiest one to take for granted. Especially when you are an ambitious little prat. But since moving to Belgium left me seriously sea-deprived – there is nothing like good old loss to make you realise how much something meant to you – this is my last chance to rediscover the wonders of swimming in the sea every single day.
There is this one thing that the water did for me all those years ago that it still does today: it reminds me of my dreams. It has a peculiar way of stripping away all my concerns and reminding me of what is truly important. It doesn’t matter how much my dreams have changed since I was the restless teenager I once was; all new desires are accepted, and everything is possible.
I don’t know if it is the cleansing power of water or the grand nature surrounding this little bay I called home for so many summers, but when I’m immersed in its salty waters, I forget what’s been dragging me down, and I just float. Life is simple. It’s easy. It just flows. Something is calling me back to what matters.
I may no longer get the itch to leave this place by the end of August and I might have lived here happily ever after, but I know that winter does come here too. So, I plan to get as much sea energy as possible and soak in the sun maybe a little bit longer than I should in hopes that I’ll shed some old skin and rediscover my lust for life. Because the sea does this to me; it always has.
