Hot Sand and Salty Waters

By Spades Rivera

When I swam with my cousins at the beach, some of them swam far off into the ocean before coming back with a large starfish. It was orange. Red sea urchins and baby crabs were a common sight, too, especially in the tide pools. Jagged rocks and giant brain corals our picturesque summertime stomping grounds. Sea glass and broken pieces of corals from the distant reef became our personal collections. 

Sometimes we had to watch where we stepped because the sea floor would suddenly drop beneath our feet. If you could swim though, that wasn’t much of an issue. Luckily, I could. 

I was eight.

One easter weekend, I had been visiting my dad. We’d gone to the beach for a barbecue with my aunties, uncles, and cousins. We settled in a spot that had a rock wall to our right and a few jagged stones buried deep into the sand, a mistake as we all watched the rough, choppy blue water because my cousins and I couldn’t resist. 

We ran straight in.

I was a decent swimmer, capable of holding my own if necessary. 

Today, it would be necessary because when swimming and playing in the ocean water, I never realized when I was straying away, and there were plenty of times in which one of us would end up on the wrong side of that rock wall. We’d grown used to being alerted by an adult calling us to swam back over. I even remember a time when I strayed to the wrong side and had somehow floated back to shore. Other times I’d been out in rough water where it felt like my limbs, no matter how hard I tried, wouldn’t cooperate. My vision, and not my body, was doing all of the swimming and my head felt like it was filled with lead. When I’d eventually made it back to shore, I stumbled and fell to my knees, forcing myself up before diving right back into the water. Now, though, I was on the correct side and our uncles and older cousins had joined us.

As the sun set and the blue sky transitioned to orange and yellow, the clouds gained a purplish hue. Waves grew tall. Taller than me, my cousins, and my uncles. And as the little ones began leaving the water, the rest of us stayed. 

The waves pulled me toward them as they grew and I bravely dove head first into their gaping mouths, my tumbling an out-of-body experience. 

Sometimes, after diving into the wave, I was unable to see anything except for the sand swirling around me. Other times, my dad caught ahold of me, and we’d tumble together. My arms and legs would be scratched up from the rocks… and coral… and shells once we spat out onto the shore. My wet, two-week-old cornrows coated in sand. My eyes burning from sea’s salty water as my vision swirled like I’d been thrown into a washing machine. And yet, I’d always run back in for more.

I’m not sure why dad never stopped me? Well no. Actually, he tried. Even in my dizzy state, at that age, I was faster than him. He shouted for me to stop as I darted toward the water, but I ignored him. I thought it was all a game— a game that didn’t come without a cost.

The next day, Dad had to take me to Aunt Guela’s so that my cousin, Kayla, could try to remove what seemed like buckets of sand out of my hair. It wasn’t a fun time since she had no patience. Combine that with me having a tender head, and the result was a crap-ton of additional knots and me becoming dehydrated after crying for two hours. Aunt Guela then decided to have pity on me and took control of the comb, being significantly more gentle and getting the majority of the sand out of my hair much faster than Kayla.

“I bet you wish you listened to me now,” Dad said when he came back to Guela braiding up my hair. Despite my sniffling nose and puffy eyes, I found a way to looked at him.

“No,” I affirmed, “Also, Kayla is never doing my hair again.”