Water Mother
“Hey there,” I say to Mother Ocean and her crashing Pacific waves. “I’m going on a trip. I’ll miss you.” I talk to her quite often and unashamedly. She listens, too—I know she does. When I am sad, she comforts me. When I want a thrill, she gives me one. She is benevolent but strict. Her rip tides chastise me, her foam caresses me, her sea life teases me, and always, always, she beckons me.
Still, I must go. And so…
I drive away, away, a ways away, down to the bay, where the waters are gray and sluggish and tangled in mangrove roots, hiding gator and manatee and other brethren from the primordial soup we all share in; where barges watch for sand banks and people speak with lilt and twang.
Away and away and farther still till I stop for lack of land, where turtles nest in dunes of sand. I hear her call, confused at first. And then my mind grows wide as my smile. “Hey, there,” I say to Mother Ocean and her placid Atlantic ripples tickling my toes.
“Silly,” she says, “You never left me at all. Did you not feel the brisk cool Rio Grande, the Mississippi rain? Did you not see me dressed in emerald green along the Gulf, did you not hear my voice in the wind rushing to birdsong?
“I am water, cloud, and vapor. I am here, and there, and the same, and different. I am a frightening stranger and an intimate mate. I am you and you are me. I am ocean and you are human, but we are one.
“Your neighbor is you. Your stranger is you. Your enemy is you. Your lover is you. Remember this, next time you see a drop of water. You are loved. All of you is loved and all of you are loved, and you share a common mother—me. You would be wise to remember, and wiser still, to share this knowledge.”
And so, I travel back, back, back, through storm and cyclone and hurricane and I think—enemy, friend, water, unity.
Love.
I am not going home, no matter where I am. I am already there.
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