The Selchie's Stars

My mother loved the ocean. The house of my childhood was in a dune-wreathed neighborhood, all color muted, the clips and clops of the horses muffled, the whispering hiss of waves and foghorn songs unrelenting; with a salty little patch of a garden that grew only iceplant and orange nasturtiums. My mother walked the strand every morning, and my father never allowed her to go alone, as if he were afraid she might swim away; he took his heavy pole and his great gleaming hooks and his lead surfweights, and my mother cooked sand dabs in breadcrumbs and butter for supper.

At six years old, it was only because i turned my myself resolutely eastward and walked forever toward the rising sun that i learned that the rest of the town lay sparkling in a harsh, dazzling light, as confident and content as a sun-soused cat. My father found me and took me home, to face my mother's hurt silence.

My mother thought the hard light away from the seamists vulgar, if not dangerous; and as i grew, so did she: ever more disapproving and disappointed as i turned away from the sea, wandering an inner wilderness of forests and deserts and snowy mountains, far away from her beloved waters.

As time passed we barely spoke to one another, old misunderstandings and small woundings and abandonments sufficing. Then, at twelve, away from home at summer camp in the valley, i made a discovery i thought would break us apart forever: stars.

At home the fog crept in every evening, piling grey counterpanes on the sandy cobbles until not even the moon could burn through, but there i lay on my blanket under a vast sky, stars uncountable, distant and grand and mysterious. i blamed my mother for keeping me from this wild beauty that made my breath catch in my chest, but i tucked that away in a secret place in my heart.

At fifteen, as if it weren't enough that we lived in this gloomy little place, where i tipped sand from my shoes, and kicked at the kelp, and tossed broken cockleshells back into the surf, my mother decided the family vacation was to be at yet another beach, miles north up the coast.

The dunes sucked at my feet, making every step a struggle; i lost my key among the driftwood stacks, and all i could think was: away, away, i want to be away from here, away from my mother who always looks sad, away from this soggy, starless place. In my mother's house by the sea, i shouted and stomped off and slammed my door, then slammed out again to shout some more, until my father put a stop to it, by saying merely, but in his quiet-and-dangerous voice: That Is Quite Enough. And so it was.

We followed the river through a cool mossy wood to the sea, and the holiday beach was brilliantly sunny, and i nursed a small hope. The waves tossed droplets that caught the sun's fire, and my brothers built a mighty sand fortress with a channelled moat, though the water, salty as tears, only disappeared between tiny wet pebbles. We ate a sand-crunchy picnic of oysters roasted over a smoky driftwood fire, and drank lemonade, and i forgot to scowl. But as the sun set, the fog tumbled in, and i pointedly made my bed as far from my family as i dared.

In the deepest dark of that night, my mother woke me from a dream and said, Come, Look; and i saw that the fog had fled, and the stars burned more fiercely than ever before, or since. We sat there in silence, my mother and i, as a harbor seal, spotted silver and slate, crept out of the lapping water to nurse her fuzzy pup asleep on the cool sand, and i knew then that my mother loved me, and i her, but i tucked that, too, away in a secret place in my heart.

And soon enough, i found a young man, exactly like my father: kind, but watching me always, as if i might disappear like seawater into the sand. i told myself it was love, and he took me away, to a house in the mountains, half a continent away from any shore. i walked the riverbank every morning, and he never allowed me to go alone; he took his bamboo pole and his flies and his floats, and i cooked brown trout with pine nuts for supper.

But the longer i lived there, the sadder i became, until i was as empty and ethereal as the mists i had escaped, and he watched me still, eyes troubled; and i began to think: away, away...

One night i dreamed i was walking along a beach under a starry sky, and a seal looked at me with her great, dark, lonely eyes, and spoke to me in my mother's voice. i packed in a panic that very morning, and flew away from my bewildered husband, but i arrived home too late; my mother had died, and there was nothing for me to do but take her ashes to scatter on the holiday beach.

Among her things i found a folded skin, spotted silver and slate, with a note in her elegant hand: This was mine, but I never had the courage. Now it is yours: use it; for life is short, but the sea is eternal.

So i carry it, too, to this coastal resting place; where the river rushes forever into the arms of the sea, and i pour out my heart's secrets, onto the sand.

(for faucon)