Terry Helwig - Shifting Shorelines: Messages From a Wiser Self

MI ISLA

I smell of sunscreen, and perspiration beads on my brow, the result of corkscrewing a hibiscus-pink umbrella stand twelve inches into the sand. Here, at the waters edge, a sea breeze flutters my bangs. I secure the umbrella, win the tussle with my salt-corroded beach chair that creaks into submission, and ferret out my writing journal and Spanish class workbook. Admittedly, I dont open either one for the better part of an hour. I simply sit and stare at the waves, allowing my mind to wander and drift like the coconut wobbling in the tide before me, destined for a distant shore.

The only Spanish I can conjure up this sultry afternoon is: Quiero nadar. I want to swim.

The outgoing tide has created a wide swath of beach. I wade into the Gulf, warm water lapping against my knees as I shuffle my feet to shoo away any stingrays that may have buried themselves beneath the sand. Stingrays are, by nature, docile creatures, attacking with their barbed tail only when they feel threatened, like being stepped on. I have seen their dark, V-shaped shadows glide silently beneath the undulating waves many times; I have never once, in forty years, been bothered.

The sandy bottom dips away and I bob in the current, like a lazy buoy at sea. Frigatebirds glide overhead, suspended on air currents, without so much as a single flap of their wings, just the tilt of a wing feather here and there. I am forever in awe of the long-tailed frigates, a little jealous, even. Solar-powered transmitters have tracked some of these birds aloft for two months at a time, never once alighting, eating and sleeping on the wing; they fly on average 255 miles daily. What freedom, soaring unencumbered above the sea in thermals and tropical breezes.

I cannot ride the thermals, but I can and do enjoy the tropical breezesone of many things bonding me to this island. Salt water splashes my lips. The divide between my growing-up years in West Texas and this island overwhelms me at times. My five younger sisters and I lived with our parents in a ten-foot-by-sixty-foot trailer. The good thing about living in a trailer is that it can be easily moved. The bad thing about living in a trailer is that it can be easily moved.

Always the proverbial new girl, I attended twelve schools, in twelve different towns, before my high school graduation. Daddys oil-exploration job required him and his diamond bits to drill core samples in hundreds of remote fields in the big-sky country of the American Southwest. Daddy searched for crude oil, created by plankton in ancient seas, and I searched for something just as remotea cure for Mama.

Mom married numerous times, twice to Daddy, and she often found solace in bars at night. It was a neighbor child who informed me, with some certitude, that Mama was a playgirl. When I questioned Mama about this, she tightened her jaw and steeled her hazel eyes. Nosy neighbors! she said. Dont pay them any mind.

Mostly, I didnt pay the neighbors any mind. As the oldest child, I had plenty of chores and homework to keep me distracted. But at night, after my sisters and I had made dinner, done the dishes, and put the little ones to bed, I would lie in bed wishing for a different kind of life; one with a mom who didnt hang out at bars and swallow so many pills. I wanted a mom more like June Cleaver, a mom who tucked me in at night and made fresh-baked cookies.

Then, somewhere along the line, I traded in June Cleaver for the life of a castaway, probably after reading Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe and Johann David Wysss The Swiss Family Robinson. The thought of living on a deserted island became a balm for my troubles.

Night after night, I visited my imaginary island. I feared nothing there on the sunlit shore. Strong, happy, and tanned, I built a tree house in my imagination from debris that washed ashore, including a canvas sail that I hung as a hammock for my bed. I fashioned make-believe ropes and shells into room dividers and planks of waterlogged lumber into a bench and picnic table, just like the one Daddy built for our trailer. Fragrant flowers rested in coconut bowls. From my tree house bed, I could watch falling stars and gaze upon the moon. I ordered my world, on my beautiful island, in ways that I could never order my world in real life.

The hours I spent conjuring up my island sanctuary were legion. I visited there for many years. But it wasnt until I was a young mom, visiting Disney Worlds Swiss Family Robinson tree house for the first time, that a familiar feeling washed over me. Seeing the tidied, makeshift rooms of the tree house, running my hands across the rough ropes and limbs, admiring the picnic-like table, covered with booksall the memories of my imaginary island swept over me.

My knees actually buckled.

You okay? my husband, Jim, asked.

I nodded, wondering how to convey the tidal wave of insight that suddenly overwhelmed me. I had never connected the dots. How did I not see it? My childhood fantasy, the one I thought I had outgrown, the one I had thrown onto the trash heap of adulthood, had come true. Those many hours spent conjuring up an island had come to fruition.

I now live on an island, and, evidently, not entirely by happenstance. Like the frigates, riding the currents, adjusting a wing feather here and there, my longing and countless hours of visualization must have created thermals and currents that helped lead me here. My island is not deserted, but the ten thousand islands surrounding it are. I visit some of these deserted shores by boat and kayak, leaving only footprints in the sand. I do not sleep in a canvas-sail bed, but I do watch falling stars and gaze upon the moon.

Dont ever doubt the power of your thoughts, I would tell my younger self. Dont squander them on anger, hopelessness, worry, or regret. Instead, bind your thoughts together with ropes of hope and determination. Use them to build a dream; dreams can keep you aloft for months, even years. They can help you soar above your circumstances and sustain yourself on the wing.

If repeated thoughts and dreams can manifest in our threedimensional world, make sure to tend your dreams with care. Continually visualize yourself where you want to be; let yourself feel the textures of the life you seek. Feel the roughness of a canvas-sail bed; allow your eyes to look outward from the place of your dreams. If you long for something, picture yourself already there. You have control of what you yearn for; dont invite doubt to join you. Send him on his way. He knows not of thermals and currents that can lift a wing and help it soar.

Salt water splashes my legs as I shuffle back to the shore. Rivulets of water stream down my body and disappear into my thirsty beach towel. My salt-corroded beach chair creaks under my weight. Tucked into my circle of shade, on my longed-for island, with the wide expanse of beach before me, I open my writing journal and pick up my pen.

Mi Isla... I begin.

SEA JEWEL

T he sun yawns in the east, sending soft morning rays to illumine the various treasures dropped by the waves overnight. Different treasures get washed ashore with different tides, which is true this morning. I glimpse something unusual peeking through the bulbous seaweed. Using my staff of driftwood, I poke and crunch through the mound of seaweed, pen shells, and decaying sea urchins the urchins spiny carcasses off-gassing an ammonia smell with such pungency that my eyes water.

Despite the nose-wrinkling odor, I bend and pick up a marble-size, silver-gray orb of loveliness that feels both hard and silky-smooth, almost jewel-like, between my fingertips. I have been shelling for years, but Ive never seen anything like this. It is hollow and weighs less than a dime, but it is neither a shell nor a stone. Still, I have no doubt that it belongs to the sea.