What growing up by the sea does to you

The truth is that as a child you take the sea for granted. The sea is there, and the sea is female. You may or may not be able to see her from your bedroom window, you may or may not be able to return to her every day, but she is there.

I don’t remember the exact moment that I absorbed that the sea is ever-present, just as I don’t remember the exact moment I accepted that the sky is on most days blue. But on that momentary, unconscious realisation that the sea is there, the sea becomes part of your soul, part of your very being.

Truth #2 is that you don’t really realise how much the sea changes you until you spend some time at a place without sea, until you meet people who have not grown up by the sea. That’s when you see the difference. That’s when you realise that the colour blue means something entirely different to you, and it’s a different colour altogether that you associate with this word. For you, there are so many different shades of blue, but the very basic blue is that clear, deep and enchanting but not too dark colour of the water roughly 100 yards from the shore.

And then comes the gradual but nonetheless surprising realisation that the word summer also means something entirely different to you. Summer is blinding yellow, it is scorching sand and you’re barefoot, it is dried salt forming white patches and a second skin all over your sunburned body, it is dry hair and unbelievable humidity. The word summer is thereby synonymous with the words Saturday, Sunday, weekend, trip, holidays, peace, ice cream, freedom, love.

When you do leave home for a place without sea comes a very subtle but very distinct and confusing pain. Your eyes squint. You lose sense of direction. You lose your point of reference. And one day you unconsciously bring the sea closer to you, behind some buildings in your neighbourhood, accepting that she is there but simply out of view, and go on with your life. What remains shocking to you, however, is how there can be a horizon without one component of it being that beautiful blue water.

Growing up by the sea does not really change you. It defines you. Every given winter when the water is too cold you feel somehow incomplete, as cliché as this may sound. Your skin aches for the salt and the sun and the sea and the summer and all that beauty described by words which sound like white foam. Until time comes for that first dive, and every first dive of each year is a return home. It is rebirth. It is freedom. It is falling in love all over again. It re-establishes a connection that was never really lost but laid dormant until the first sign of a rise in temperature awakens it once more.

There is no better place, there is no other place to be truly happy than by the sea. There is no other place to cry than by the sea, no other place to clear your mind, to make up your mind, to sleep, to go for a walk, to have an early-morning coffee, a late-night beer, a first date, a first dance, a first kiss, a second kiss, to have breakfast or lunch or dinner, to spend Saturday or Sunday or Tuesday or any other day or birthday or Christmas or New Year’s at 7 a.m., to dream and to love than by the sea.

And what’s truly beautiful is the realisation that you are taught none of these things. And if you’re lucky to have children of your own one day, you won’t teach these things to them either. No. You will simply point out the little facts or myths passed down to you which may or may not have any sense of truth in them, namely, that if they have sore muscles they should swim to feel better. If they have backaches they should walk barefoot on pebbles. If they’re feeling ill they should inhale saltwater.

There won’t be any teachings of beauty, of true magic, of respect or humility. You know better than to think you can teach anything that a newborn won’t learn from the first sea breeze that will gently caress his cheeks.