The ocean breeze blows cool across the boards, blankets the rides with a moist dew and caresses my skin with its touch. It tickles my flesh and knocks at the fabric that covers my face. I long to suck it in, in deep satisfying breaths, to feel it fresh and alive within my lungs, to smell its salty balmy essence.
Yet I am told there is a monster on the loose, one that would rob me of life and breath itself. This monster roams across the earth seeking to wreak havoc and kill, caring not for the life it snuffs out. It rides on the air, and through the ebb and flow of the tide that is the breath that sustains me.
My eyes scan the pier dotted with rides and bright lights for the faces of my children. I want to see the smiles spread across their features, their complexions glow pink from the humid kiss of the sea air and watch the deep belly giggles that rise up and ripple through their cheeks and dance in their eyes.
I can only see their eyes.
The dunes freely exhale the rich oxygen we all crave. Their lovely vapor drifts across the sand, sails free on the breeze and seeps around and through the covering I’m told to wear, filling all things. Its essence knows no limits. The mask can’t hold it back. It sustains me. It is the effervescence that caries life itself in a flawless balance of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon monoxide.
I crave it. My heart races and the world spins. The arteries and capillaries in my brain open wide, making way for the rich oxygen filled blood they once took for granted. It doesn’t come.
I am told there’s an insidious new monster on the loose.
The nerves in my chest fire impulses that interrupt my thoughts and remind me of another monster. One that ravaged three years ago and left my chest bear and vulnerable, one that left me in pain.
Other monsters too clamor for recognition. Autoimmune diseases. Car accidents. Cancer. Surgeries. Hurricanes and earthquakes and fires – even abuse from people, from those I loved. The most beautiful blessings in my life carry pain and sadness and sometimes inflict hurt.
Just like the tainted air that I breathe.
I still choose them.
Risk invades all good things.
Risk invades life. It rears it’s ugly head in schools, in my life, in my children’s lives, in my husband’s. It lurks behind the wheel of the car that transports me. It hovers above the airplane. It smolders within the food I eat. It lies ahead in the ticking time bomb that is age. It lurks between relationships and shouts loudly from the graveyard.
Death is coming.
It’s on its way even now. The monster may bite me today. It may be the harbinger of death for me. It may be another monster.
Or perhaps it’s only one monster that ravages the earth.
This fallen world heaves and exhales its brokenness everywhere. Death comes and steals and ravages lives and hearts.
Yet beauty surrounds us.
It’s everywhere.
The waves crash upon the shore, strong and undaunted, sustaining life. The sun shines brilliantly radiating warmth and beauty, and sometimes it burns. The dunes wave in flowing undulations of joy. Old age marches ever closer, yet aging says I’m still here. I’m still in the game. The atmosphere sustains life, and relationships are worth the hard.
I take off the mask.
I gulp in deep breaths of sea air. I breathe in life – all of it. The good and the bad. I want it all. The darkness lifts. The lights of the amusement pier come into focus.
The microbiome battles in the minutia beyond.
Good still wins.
I choose life with all of its risk.
A voice invades my thoughts.. A man is walking towards me. “Mam. You must wear a covering here.”
I get it now.
It’s freedom I crave. It’s the freedom to live, to work, to love and laugh, to hug, to win and lose – to breathe the air that may hurt me. It’s freedom that I want. I choose the freedom to live unafraid, to take my chances, to live life with all of its risks. I choose the freedom to meet the monsters of this world face to face. I choose the freedom to let them wound me, even if their presence delivers death to me.
– that is, when I still had the freedom to choose.
