Mermaid Tales

I was a lucky child with grandmothers whose houses overlooked the sea – one on the west coast – two on the east. I grew up taking the ocean and beaches for granted, like so many other priveleges. I listened to waves lapping the shore, fog horns blowing as I drifted off to sleep.

Salty air kept things damp, caused mildew and rust, made the pages of our books curl, and clogged the salt shaker, but we didn’t care. We worked with it, we didn’t try to change it. Rice in the salt shaker. Hanging towels on the line in the sun. The musty smell of mildew fills me with nostalgia for my mermaid days where daily swims were part of our routine. The salt clung to our hair and our skin until we rinsed off under the outside shower at the end of the day.

Karen Blixen using her pseudonym, Isak Dinesen, wrote that “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” So it was for me, as I struggled to cope with the loss of family,parents, pets and friends. I walked the shore, dipping in and out of the waves to cool off as I went, crying, where no one could see me. With others I kept my smile on and said I was fine, but at the shore I could be the little mermaid with a broken heart. The Ocean would keep my secret. I didn’t have to be brave.

When I was five, my father brought me along on a business trip to Copenhagen , a few years before his death,to show me the little mermaid statue, only to find it had been decapitated by vandals. I had nightmares about it for the rest of the trip. Since then, the statue has been repeatedly vandalized – beheaded twice, lost an arm and has paint poured over her multiple times. Most recently she was knocked off of her pedestal into the water with explosives. The Danish government talks about moving her, but she still sits restored on a rock by the water today. A symbol to me that no matter what life throws at me – loss, death, cancer, stroke, pandemics – I can be restored, as well.

Walking the shore in the early morning, marveling at what the tide has brought in or swimming in the ocean’s effervescence in the early evening always brought out the best of my sense of wonder. My mermaid days are behind me now. I can no longer rely on my knees to support me as I stagger up from the drop off. I am afraid to swim by myself. I don’t live near an ocean anymore. I can’t remember the last time I was on a beach, but my inner mermaid stills calls me with her siren song and reminds me that I can carry on.

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