Those Cute Little Sharks

On the phone with my son, we talk about our days, our lives.

He lives in Hawaii and I live in Mexico. He spends most of his awake time on the water and I spend some time each day looking at the same ocean, far far away.

Each day I want to go into the ocean, I really want to go in, but I rarely do. Because where I live the water is rough and also, mostly, because I am scared. Scared of how big this water is, how deep it is, how fast it moves, and also scared of All The Stuff That Lives in It.

When I was a baby, I met the Mediterranean Sea.

I think that at seven months of age, as I was first lowered into her wet and welcoming body, I built a strong silent bond with her, and from then on, immersing myself in the Med has always felt to me like going back into the womb. I know her smell, her salt, her sound. Day and night. When I visited her, after an almost 20-year absence, I sobbed hard and from the depth of my soul. I sobbed grief unsobbed, goodbyes unsaid, hurts unscreamed and I sobbed of love. I was home, floating in her amniotic fluid and knowing that nothing, absolutely nothing could ever hurt me while I was in her embrace.

It makes no sense, I know.

All kinds of things can happen in the Mediterranean Sea - and have - but while my mind knows this, my cells refuse to hear it. Lately, I have been craving her.

The Pacific Ocean… a very different thing.

I have spent years and years living close to it, be it in Hawaii, in Washington State, or in Mexico. I love it, I admire it, I respect it. I have sat by its edge and watched the sun disappear over and over again. Most days my feet walk in its foam and the movement of its shore. It is a part of my life. But it is not part of my DNA and maybe because of this, my conversation with it is different.

Back to my son, who loves any body of water and wants to get as close as he can to it, and as close as he can to its inhabitants.

A few months ago, he had told me about how, as a part of his job, he had been swimming with sharks. I had heard it when he had said it.

Then a couple of weeks ago, he sent me a video of him swimming with … oh I don’t know… maybe 30 sharks?

It was a beautiful video. Crystal blue water, silence, and all these huge sea animals swimming around slowly, all these huge sea animals - very much looking like sharks - swimming around … my son.

I called him.

“What the heck is going on in this video?” I demanded to know.

“What do you mean?” he responded.

“What are you doing in this video and who are you doing it with? These look like sharks.”

“Mom. I told you months ago. I swim with sharks. You don’t remember me telling you this?”

He was talking a little slowly. In fact, he sounded a tad worried. I think since I passed the 55-year mark, he might have started to look for signs of me forgetting things.

I think back.

Yes, I do remember him saying this, I do.

BUT I suddenly also remember - and this is where things get weird - the physical feeling of immediately rejecting the reality of what he had told me. I remember him saying it and me instantly translating it in my brain, the way I may translate an easy English word into Spanish.

He had said “sharks” and I had translated it to “cute-sea-animals-who-go-by-the-name-of-sharks-but-are-a-totally-different-thing-and-would-never-hurt-my-baby.”

He waited for me to tell him that yes, I did remember. It would have been easier to tell him that I had forgotten than to tell him about how I had immediately put on a thick suit of denial. To make him think that my mind was slipping instead of the truth which - as a friend wrote a few days ago - I had gas-lit myself.

Which I had been able to do comfortably, until the elegant, terrifying video showed up on my phone, leaving no doubt as to what was going on, what had been going on, and what I had zero power to stop.

My son regularly swims with sharks and loves it.

“But babe?” I tried. “Isn’t this dangerous?” Just as I said it I knew how it sounded.

“Not if you know what you’re doing, not if you can read them,” was his answer.

Steve Irwin’s name flashed through my mind, came in through the left side of my head, and exited on the right side, leaving a searing sea-scented scar in between.

Parenting.
Zero control.
Heart walking outside of our bodies.

I know how it works. I have decades of experience.

Maybe my funny inner translator knows too and so tried to give me a break, not bother me with things I can’t change, and let me sleep at night. It gave me something to hang on to, a grown-up Santa of sorts: Those Cute Little Sharks Who Would Never Harm Anyone.

As our hearts get tangled with other hearts through the course of our lives, which is one of the main points of having a heart, we have the option to protect our vulnerability, to not let fear whisper in our ears, and to pretend that something easier is happening.

We also have the option to not only accept each other’s choices but to celebrate them, even if they scare the beejeebees out of us.

The first option is easiest, but the second option is where intimacy lives, where we really get to see someone else, to know them.

My son swims with sharks. I now choose to celebrate this, his love of it, his passion that I do not share and that scares me. I choose to celebrate him.

And I still miss the Med.