It is not to any house, but to this beach that I have bonded. I belong alongside this rocky inlet with its salt tides, its pine tiered green islands, its gulls who remember us even when we’ve forgotten ourselves – Women in the Wild
Many people have asked why I have this job. Why I ran away to sea. A wise co-worker of mine (who, at the time, had no idea how wise she sounded) said to me once that we all come out here running from something, but we stay because we find somewhere we can stop running. I don’t think she really realized at the time how right she was.
Truth is, I don’t remember a time when my life didn’t have a touch of salt around the edges. I was a quiet child, but with that quiet solitude came a natural ability to balance with the world around me, and always, always, I was drawn to the water. That could be because I grew up so close to it, or perhaps it was something else altogether. I have never been afraid of the water, I have never worried that it would hurt me. As a child I clambered over rocks speckled with sharp barnicles and slippery patches of seaweed, as a university student I climbed those same rocks blind and barefoot, suffering not a single cut or scratch along the way.
I don’t know where it came from – though I have my suspicions – all I know, is that no one – except possibly me – was surprised when I ended up living a life that’s almost solely dictated by the tides. I suspect that if I hadn’t have ended up on the more predictable schedule of cruise ships, I would have ended up on the wind-driven salt crusted schedule of Tall Ships. Something I suspect is still in my very near future.
People ask me where my home is. The truth is, these days I don’t always know. I have roots – very strong ones – I have a house, I have a roof over my head, I have a family who loves me, but home? Home is something I carry with me these days, and it shifts with me from place to place. I take pieces of it with me, and sometimes my heart gets very sore for missing it, but it’s never really far away from me. After all, somewhere, somehow, we’re all connected to the same ocean. I need to remind myself of that sometimes.
Apologies for the overflow of too many thoughts; I suppose I’m just still looking for my seal skin…one day, someone will find it for me, and turn it into a coat and keep it in the attic, and perhaps that will temporarily still me…but I doubt it, because I suspect the only person who would do such a thing would be someone who is just as much a selkie as myself, and we are no more at home on land than a lion would be in the water…