The Sea When Young

On December 29th, we went offshore at last.  It had been a long time, too long, three months of finding work and a place, of fixing the boat, of learning what we might be together having leapt from two different worlds into a new one of our own making.  Where we would head became a matter of time, weather, what Bryan's folks could handle.  We considered the Keys, north up the Intercoastal Waterway, and the Bahamas.  We settled on Bimini, about fifty miles from Miami, a relatively easy sail with decent facilities for Bryan's folks who had some vision and mobility issues.

The deciding factor was open water.  Once you've been out of sight of land, in deep water, time stretching so it could be any day, any year, all times, all years, you find yourself hungering for it, seeking it out.  My time offshore taught me how it feels to be on the right course, even with no landmarks in sight.  It taught me the feel of steady as she goes.  I don't always have a name for this hunger.  I don't always know that it is a hunger at all.  It's still so new.  But once I am out in it, even if I'm feeling less than sea-worthy (my first day offshore seems to be marked by seasickness which dissipates after but seems to be a physical manifestation of the vertigo that comes for me when I leave land for water), I understand this is what I've been missing, what I've needed.

Bimini is the closest of the islands of the Bahamas to Miami.  A small island, it is at its core as much as it tries to be the like the US, completely, and unabashedly itself.   It's there, buried, under the tourism, under the old marinas that draw the power boaters and sports fishermen, the cruisers and true sailors, under the new marina on the north end of the North Island and those cookie-cutter, three-bedroom, three-bath "shacks" they built there for the rich outsiders who want a piece of this place no matter what it costs to the island or the people who live there.  It smacks of colonialism, this sheltered enclave which ultimately will have little contact with the rest of the island beyond it's pampered youth finding their way to Alice Town to cause trouble, as if it was theirs, which of course they will think it is.  Of course the old marinas carry the taint of colonialism too; we just tend to pretend they don't.  And yet the island has had its way all these years, despite those who have made a claim on it.  It will continue as it has, despite the rich and entitled, going on long after.  You can see it from the beach, in the old stone of the land, in the vast span of the ocean, in this small island that has survived relentless water and wind and seismic forces.  It's old, Bimini, and young too, all at the same time, which is how I feel walking this island, looking out at the sea, a blue so young and hopeful.

I'm not young.  The white hair I see every morning in the mirror reminds me that the years passed outnumber the years left and yet, these months of leap and faith, hope and love, have me feeling like the ocean around Bimini - young, thrilled and thrilling, like I was in that place between childhood and adult back when I roamed Sunset Beach with just the ocean as my companion.   What does it mean to be both young and ancient?  What is a young sea?  Rough? Eager? Warm? Restless?  Here, at this age, with a man who is so much the boy I almost remember and the man I fell in love with, I think I'm coming to find out. Time will tell, as it always does.