Water Is Life

One of my earliest memories of the sea and the sand is of my grandfather changing into his bathing suit inside a small hut made of dried palm leaves. It served as shelter, changing room, and shade for those of us who did not own property beside the beach.

Why that particular memory remains in my mind, and not another one that might seem more meaningful, playing in the water, holding my mother’s hand, or laughing with my father, I cannot say. Memory is like that. The brain keeps certain images and lets others dissolve, and at least for me, there is no logical explanation for what it chooses to preserve.

I am sure it was not my first visit to the ocean, but it is the first one I remember. I wish I could recall stepping into the water, running barefoot along the shore, or playing with my parents beneath the sun. I remember many other visits to the beaches of my homeland, yet from that day, what stayed with me was the aging body of my grandfather as he put on his bathing suit and hung his trousers from a branch. My granddad in my ayes was a giant of a man, bold head and thick eyeglasses. A man of few words and yet with grate care and loving man to me. I don’t remember my grandmother, my mother, my father, or anyone else from that day. I know which beach it was not because memory tells me, but because I was told where we were, and because I returned there many times afterward.

One thing I do know is that the ocean, the sea, and the beach were, and perhaps still are, an essential part of my life. Going to the ocean was one of the great rituals of my childhood. Whenever there was a holiday, any holiday at all, going to the ocean was not a question. It was a necessity, almost a calling.

In my homeland, El Salvador, the smallest of the seven countries of Central America, the ocean is never truly far away. Even those who live far from the coast are only three or three and a half hours from the sea.

Everyone, at one time or another, has bathed in the Pacific Ocean. For many of us, it was once the freest form of entertainment, a shared joy open to anyone who could reach the shore. But now there are no longer many places where one can access the beach freely, as we did when I was a child. Governments have allowed the privatization of the land beside the beaches, and now one must pay to enter what once belonged to everyone. As the poet said, “…that voracious private property that has deprived us all of everything.”

Walking on the beach is a pleasure in every direction. Far from shore, the soft sand gathers between your toes; near the water, the wet sand hardens like a sidewalk beneath your feet. Each wave arrives, covers your feet with coolness, then retreats and leaves them drying in the sun. Again and again, the ocean repeats this dance. Its music is the gentle roar of waves breaking on the shore, like a lullaby sung by a mother to her children.

To grow up so close to the ocean, near some of the most beautiful beaches in the region, is an experience that marks you for life. Some beaches have white sand, born from millions of years of crushed seashells; others have black sand, formed from volcanic rock softened and shaped by the patient hands of the sea. In such a place, the Pacific Ocean is not merely a landscape. It is a protagonist in everyone’s story.

The ocean is life. It is where life began, and it remains the most mysterious place on Earth, the last great mystery of the planet.

Across Latin America, the ocean is a source of poetry, music, memory, and culture. In the northern part of the Americas, the oceans are colder and often associated with travel, migration, and distance. But farther south, we learn to swim in the ocean, to love it, to fear it, to respect it, and to honour the lives of those who live beside it.

My love for the Pacific Ocean made me forget that not all oceans are the same. Ignorance, too, played its part in what happened next.

We were visiting Prince Edward Island in the summer of 2002. After doing the things tourists do in PEI, seeing the house of Anne of Green Gables, visiting local stores, and eating in small restaurants, we walked along a boardwalk that protected the endangered vegetation growing among the beautiful red sand, a colour I had never seen before. Now I know the sands are red because they contain a high concentration of iron oxide (rust) the pigment comes from the island's soft, ancient sandstone bedrock, which breaks down over time due to weathering and coastal erosion. At last, we reached the shore we began walking on the beach and stood before the magnificent northern Atlantic.

It was a warm summer day. After walking for a while, we sat down to take in the magnificent view of what seemed to be a nearly solitary beach. About two hundred metres away, a group of people enjoyed the sun but did not enter the water. Closer to us, perhaps a hundred metres away, I saw two elderly women slowly stepping into the sea.

Accustomed, since childhood, to running toward the sea and plunging into the water without hesitation, I did what my body remembered before my mind had time to think. I ran into the water and dove headfirst into the north Atlantic.

I was not prepared for the cold water of the northern sea. The Pacific I knew was fresh and welcoming; the water in that part of PEI felt barely above freezing. With the beach warmed to about twenty-five or twenty-seven degrees, the shock of my warm body entering such cold water was immediate. Cramps seized my arms legs and feet. For what felt like far too long, I was paralyzed by the sea. The experience stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon, and it taught me something I have never forgotten: the ocean may be life, but it must never be taken for granted. To disrespect it is to learn, in an instant, how small we are.