Ziva, the Sea, and Me

This morning was all fog and the water like velvet, a pod of dolphins followed me from Hyams to Nelson as I drove through the nothingness before the sun kissed the shoreline.

Hundreds of spiderwebs were illuminated in every nook and cranny of the trees and the bush hanging over the Jeep—you could see droplets of mist outlining the intricate maze of every web.

Ziva had her head resting on my shoulder and I drove slowly with the headlights on, 4:15am, radio off, both windows down. The water was warm and underneath the waves I could hear the muffled sound of the coast guard’s horn and the boats in the distance made ripples in the waves I traced with my fingertips.

I sit on the mossy orange rocks at the end of the beach and Ziva digs and digs, early risers stroll by and kneel by her asking her what she’s looking for or where she’s digging to.

We’re soaked in saltwater the short drive home, our hearts content. I dry off Ziva’s face and sandy nose, a meditation—my bare feet on my tippy toes to reach her as loose rocks and sand prick beneath.

And when I sniffle every three seconds and whisper secrets she licks my hands and I smile, and when I kiss her in this one soft spot right next to her left eye and lick my lips all I taste is the ocean. The sun streaks like spotlights through the leaves. We’re almost back home and the sky is now blue.

I crave to keep my mind as free and peaceful as the sky, the great ocean, the highest peaks, empty of almost all distracting thought, to keep my body filled with light and to be wild and weightless.

There’s pure solitude in drinking in the liquid silver of the sea before the sun rises, in the cloudless mornings where I run so fast my lungs ache and my feet struggle not to give out under the loose sand, running into the cold sea that’s electrifying and all thunder under the rumble of the waves I dive beneath—

That then glows gold as the sun’s warmth cradles the shore. How small you feel when you look out anywhere that’s vast of nature, how you want it to swallow you whole and carry you away, and how big your heart feels when you are even for a moment, untethered, from a place from a somebody from uncertainty of what’s going to happen next.

There’s poetry in that, there’s healing in that.