I am tethered to this place somewhere deep in my bones. Even the very first time I came here, it felt familiar and like a homecoming. The low country is a siren song so sweet it feels like a sin. I love this salt marsh so purely it surpasses any human romance I have ever known. In the halo of its embrace, I simply surrender to the joy of it.
The car thump-thumps its way onto the bridge that spans the inlet waterways near Kiawah Island, about 20 miles south of Charleston. Like every year, it overfills my heart and tears of beauty form in the corners of my eyes at the first sight of the shimmering vista of salt marshes with their tidy trimmed beards of grass. The canopy of trees on the narrow two-lane highway shepherds us in with live oaks, palmettos, hibiscus. It is exotic, exquisite, extraordinary to me. Unearthly in its spell, yet very earthy in the intimate connection I feel to the land here. Somewhere it feels like someone is scrubbing my sins. It is personal redemption. And I need redemption, because I now know after traversing the painful path of this faltering marriage, that I am far more in love with this island than the man who brings me here. And this is the last year I will be coming here, certainly with him, but perhaps forever.
As we cross the bridge, I am writing in my journal, my face pressed against the windshield, turned away from him as he steers us over the span of gray water. He does not see the silent tears, perhaps pretending not to but I think really he is just unaware. Perhaps he registers my melancholy, though as he pats my knee and says, “Hey, hon, we can go to the Jasmine Porch tonight and get that one salmon you love so much. Won’t that be nice?” He pauses when I don’t respond. “You know, once we get settled in.” “Yes, nice,” I say blandly, my face wet and crumpled. I have deluded myself that I can carry this weight; that I can continue to re-assemble the broken pieces of this marriage again and again like some puzzle master. I have not wanted to admit this, because I did not want to fail. But being the only one present in this life I wanted, no I needed, to share, is now a voice singing to itself inside a cave.
I am already anticipating the rush of my bare feet on the wooden bridge and I will run until I clear the corner and can see the sea and it will bring me up short. It is more than I can absorb, I am enthralled. Goddamit, I do not want to give this up. It is everything to me – it is resonant in my heart, it is purring in my veins. The white sunshine, the musky smells, the lilting of the shrimping boats on the horizon – I tune out all other reality to let this one sacred feeling bowl me over, drown me. I am in silent communion, gratefully home inside my heart. I am manifest. I am the sooty sand, I am the glint of beach umbrella. I am inside the men fishing on the pier. I am hovering like an angel on the wing of the pelican. I am in the toddler’s striped sun hat. I am wholly animated in every sound, smell, sight, taste and touch of it. Knowing I will not be back for a very long time, maybe ever, is a poison of woe slowly leaking inside my body.
Last week, he handed me $80 and told me to go buy myself something new for the upcoming trip. I probably could have been more grateful, gracious. But I just stood there, mumbled okay, pasted on a smile that didn’t reach my eyes, and walked out of the room. I guiltily tucked it into my lingerie drawer in the secret stash place I was collecting for … for what exactly? I knew but I couldn’t draw it yet. I felt myself spinning, the axis of dread playing in my mind. My sons need a dad. Their mom needs a life. What the hell are you thinking? – You don’t know the first thing about how to make this work on your own if you walk out that door. Well, it’s not exactly working now, is it? I’m hiding away from my family, exhausted from school and work and the kids and the emotional wreckage my life has become. And I can’t even have a glass of wine, because it gives him permission and makes me feel like I am condoning his excesses somehow.
In the murky moonlight, I sit on the porch and listen to the dunes quietly teem with life. I smell the crisp linen smell of the sea. I know what I have to do. I knew it before I came on this trip but for this one blessed moment, I am absolved, I am saved, I am whole, I am fierce. Never mind what comes next – I am grabbing and holding this one moment in my arms and I am alight with grace.
