beware the ides

I was on the American shore once, in Virginia. It was an overcast day. Not beachy or mediterranean. I walked out into the sea up to my waist, and was carried by the riptide hundreds of feet away from where my mother and sister sat on shore. I could barely swim out of it. Once I did, I didn't go back in.

The next time I was on a beach, I was facing east once again, but not out into the Atlantic, but out onto the sea beyond Irish shores. The beach was rocky--no sand here. It was more beautiful, more stirring to my puritan American senses. I was at the seaside in Brighton later--saw the Pavilion and sat in the sand and saw a tiny boat on the horizon.

When I was little, I nearly drowned in a local spillway. At least, I thought I nearly died. I swam past my height, and couldn't keep myself afloat. Two Army men rescued me and thus began my long love affair with decisive and powerful men. Men with strong arms. Men who can save me.