[NOTE: – Because August 26 is International Caregivers Day (created by the Journal to celebrate caregivers everywhere) we are adding this recognition to this week's essay on the ocean.

Please celebrate caregivers everywhere every day. The accompanying image was created by Liz Wessel and will reappear in the Saturday-Sunday edition of the Journal]

Ocean Magic

“I was born by the sea…my first idea of movement of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the waves.” –Isadora Duncan

   The Pacific wave yanked my four-year-old self from my father’s hand & sent me under.

   Not yet able to swim, I struggled until a truth appeared: How could I, a tiny boy, possibly triumph against such overwhelming power?

   The moment I surrendered I felt the comforting presence of the divine.

   Only four years out of the womb, I was snatched from my earthly father & glimpsed my heavenly one. Those moments live as a candle that today illuminates tears in my spirit & helps them heal. 

   Were you born from the earth or is it the sea that brought you to life?

   Attend a birth & you will see a new being rise from water not ground. The baby sails from the womb & lands on an earth that (to our senses) stands still.

   Tides keep the sea in perpetual motion. Do babies want to be rocked because they miss the rhythms of water?

   Stand on a shoreline & witness the conversation between waves & sand that constantly shifts the boundaries of both. 

   My life has been informed as much by discussions with the ocean as it has been by traveling over land.

   When I am away from the water I long for it. When I am near the water or in it I feel traces of the comfort I experienced at four. 

   Isadora Duncan attributed her legendary dance work to the influence of the sea. Your caregiving has rhythms that are better understood by noticing the tides than by watching the clock.

   Time is stuck to the earth. The ocean is as fluid as eternity. 

-Erie Chapman

 Photographs: Erie Chapman