Members of my church—(my awesome, liberal, open and affirming, God-loves-every-fucking-one, follow-Jesus’-example, modern Christian church of a UCC flavor)—were encouraged recently to write reflections about the ocean. I was really intrigued and happy by what came out of me onto paper, so I thought I’d share it. It may not be your cup of tea, totally fine. But maybe it’ll prompt you to think about what the ocean means to you. This is what it means to me.
Ocean Reflection
I often think to myself: I have ocean water running through my veins. One branch of my ancestry boasts early European settlers in the Pacific Northwest. My grandmother was born in a house in Warrenton, Oregon – the fifth child of a deputy U.S. Marshal and his Irish wife. Both immigrants. Both having made the journey from East Coast to West at some point in their 19th century lives, and their parents over another ocean from another land even more east, escaping or chasing only things I can imagine.
I often think of this part of my family tree whenever I’m at the coast and I wonder about their relationship to water in their time. Certainly, drinking water was a precious commodity along the arduous beaten path from East to West America. Landlocked waters served for handwashing, bathing, and fishing. Rivers and streams were things to cross to get somewhere else, but the ocean was always the destination. I remember my grandmother telling me the only way to get to Portland from Astoria then was by ferryboat down the Columbia River. Again, rivers were for travel and crossing, but the ocean was always the final stop – a home that previous generations suffered for and dreamed of. My great-grandparents’ westward travels – and their parents’ journey from Europe – ended there in a little coastal town built on fur trapping, fishing, clamming, trade, and sea-faring business of all sorts. Again, the ocean was not something to use, conquer, or ford, but was something that gave life – and it was something to respect, revere even.
I think about my own relationship to water and how it has vastly changed over the last few months. Before I had my now three-month old son, water was something that came out of the tap for cooking nice dinners. It was what was in the rivers I kayaked down. The long hot showers I took after twelve-hour hospital shifts. The ice cubes in my tall gin and tonics. Now, water is what comes out of the tap for the gigantic pots of coffee I make. It’s what goes in the blue plastic baby bath tub at bedtime. It’s what was in the many bags of IV fluids I received in the hospital before and after birth, and now it goes in my 2-liter water bottle that I constantly encourage myself to sip from so my body can make adequate breastmilk. And in my mind, all of it flows from that great westward body off the coast of North America, and I am reminded of it with each hum of wave crashing that emanates from the sound machine next to my son’s crib. The “ocean” setting seems to work best for him, and for me, to fall and stay asleep. I guess that Pacific oceanwater runs through his veins too. It’s comforting, the ocean sounds – experts say that it harkens back to being in the womb.
I think about the moment my water broke in the middle of the night. Strangely, fear was way in the back of my mind as I went into survival mode. It’s funny, a womb – a placenta rather – is a temporary organ, the only temporary organ humans ever have, but it does SO SO much in so little time. It gives a baby oxygen, nutrients, blood, water. It gives and gives and gives, until it breaks. And then it’s time for something more and different and wild and hard and foreign and life-altering and new.
What I think about when I read and hear about our constant taking from the ocean, the disregard and disrespect in the form of pollution, exploration, manipulation, hunting, harvesting, travel—I wonder, when are we humans going to give something back to it, after all it gives us? What if the ocean is humanity’s womb? What if it is our essential temporary organ? And then, what is going to happen to us when it breaks? In a way, I suppose, the only answer is, new life.
I let these thoughts wash over me, as I wash my son in his bathtub, as I listen to the artificial wave sounds from the nursery, as I check the current weather in Astoria on my phone, as I listen to NPR programs about climate change while breastfeeding at 3am, as I touch the seashell windchime that hangs inside our house…I’ve got ocean water running through my veins.