I realized today that our hearts are like the sea.
Both must hold everything good and strong and beautiful and both must also hold pain, all of it, under the strain of howling winds and lightening from above with waves twisting and churning and crashing over shadows of loss. Our hearts and the sea must take in all of it, every drop, and keep beating, for to live and age requires growth. Our hearts must just keep expanding with every passing day. There’s nothing else to do.
Shipwrecks and dreams are cast away, to sink and be forgotten until uncovered by a low low tide when a curious child stumbles upon the chipped remains, plucking what was from the wet sand to bring home a new treasure and weave a new story from something long forgotten. The faintest memories are heaved aboard over the transom in a crusty crab pot, heavy with seaweed glistening and wet. Picked over, studied, and kept if large enough to keep.
Lifetimes are written across the pulsing hearts of each one of us, cast adrift in quiet seas and riding roaring rivers and settling down to rest in stone cold lakes.
Where there is salt, a thousand million new stories are written every day across the sand and rocks below the surface, the tiny footprints of hermit crabs and sand dollar tracks carving pathways that no human may ever see. And in the space above, winged creatures soar carving invisible notes on air currents and swimming creatures of endless shapes and colors and sizes blow and burst about leaving tales to catch on white tipped waves and moon jelly backs.
So many stories untold. In the rivers, twigs dance and shimmy in place, wedged tight between smooth rocks, as melted snow rides the twisting path to the sea. Lakes rest in wait for the fish to return, like the rivers, waiting for the stories to arrive, the work to begin again.
Like the ocean floor, we carry thousands of stories, traces and tracks and hushed longings and desires in our hearts. Some dreams and stories make it to the surface, rising up like bubbles, there and gone as soon as we exhale. Inhale above the water, and we take in the now, this instant, this moment never to be as it is right now. Ever again. That is a beautiful thing.
All is fleeting.
Today I blew bubbles into Port Madison bay, memories came and burst at the speed of each breath, my mind flashing backwards and forwards as I swam alone over an acre of purple sand dollars, appearing below me like a black cloud fallen from the sky above.
I swam north along the empty beach scattered with crushed shells and brown twiggy trees and shrubs, past the spinning swing spot where years ago we sailed on old tires around and around an upright log, while the waves rolled in and seaweed islands formed around our sun baked legs.
As I swam, my friend Mckayla danced her cold water dance in the shallows by the public dock. Her cold water dip in skins, bedecked in a fuzzy hat encircled by pins, black suit and a smile as wide as the moon.
The still water turned my hands to ice, but memories carried me forward, and friendship over hot cocoa and sweet rolls awaited my return.
At our old dock I turned left and swam the length of the dock, between the pilings obscured by thick green water. Just above me these planks held my feet, the feet of my father, sister, brother, mother a million times. The stories have settled down to the bottom, some left forgotten, others remembered in parts, like broken shells, suggestions of the whole visible but lost.
And that’s okay. As I swam south to meet my friend onshore, crows gathered and seagulls arrived to help us write a new story. We wrapped our cold bodies up in layers of wool and cotton and contentment, perched on a log to sip “crow-coa“, as Mckayla so creatively quipped. We reminisced about our younger days in this bay, the names of old neighbor friends rolling off her tongue and sighs hovering between us like balloons. Suspended and cheerful.
Out on the bay, a seal nose appeared then disappeared silently as a few ducks floated by while a lone river otter of healthy size pattered around on the dock. His arched back shown deep brown against the backdrop of silver water.
A black crow perched on the nearby “cable crossing” sign, and we laughed and looked about and shivered a bit as we spun a new memory together.
And my heart grew even bigger.
Mary Swims 
🌬💖🧬💧🧬💖🌬