SEA'S FACES

POWER

Looking back, I realise that I was always transfixed to water in some way or another. Beyond sailing, I had learned life-safety, swam for my high school, been on jet skis, rowing, and wakeboarding all on my coast. My sister and I loved the water.

So the feeling of drowning was not a first for me at the yacht club. When we were younger, my sister and I went body-boarding in the sea. On one occasion paddling toward the sea, an enormous wall of waves cascaded down on me before I was prepared. In moments, I was engulfed in the swirling mass of sea and hurled down to the seabed. Like the tangled sea weed beneath me, I was thrashing and tumbling under the water. When I found the surface, I couldn’t even grasp my breath before I was swallowed again by the next wave. Eventually the sea spat me out. But I crawled from its clutch, gripping onto the sand until it moulded like clay in my palms, spluttering and frantically hoarding the air around me. My eyes were wild and my skin was opal as if soaked translucent to the bone. I sat out body boarding for a bit, just sitting on the bank imagining if the sea took me whole instead.

The power of the sea is not lost on me. The beach is often a vicious place. Its serene openness can quickly lap up like a vortex, enveloping you inside and reducing you to nothing.

Sadly, this was the case for my Nana’s neighbour, who whilst walking on the sea front was caught in a horrible wind which took the very breath from her body.

PEACE

Hartlepool has so many faces. When I see its national-media portrayal, or even people’s reactions when I disclose to them where I’m from, I can’t help but feel defensive of this little town. I don’t recognise the town they see. I don’t associate with these rough parts or people. That is not to say I’m unaware of the dark edges of Hartlepool, but that they are not the edges of my personal map. Although, existing once in the landscape and now living somewhere else, the map can be hard to see. Its assembly is sporadic and layered: as the contours of my memories, symbols of family stories and old faint lines of stories untold. It is true that landscapes are horizontal.

Struggling to place myself in this town, I walk once again down the beach trying to contemplate everything. But attempts fail when I am absorbed into the life around me.

It was one of those good days where the temperature was so mild it was absent, only presented by the surges of warmth in the breeze. The sand was so fine that only bare feet could skip over its surface without sinking.

It was one of those mind-clearing days, where it’s impossible to retain a line of thought above the perfect quietness of it all. Like the tide, my mind retreats back and I float in the nostalgia of past days like this. The faint memory of walking bare foot with my Mum glimmers so quickly it almost vanishes but the feeling of it lingers.

I realise this feeling is the best feeling of home. An unstated presence- at once easing and numbing.