Disappearing Sands

by Julie Paul

In every wave, a multitude of yellow fish.

It’s November, 2017, and we’re in Kona, on the Big Island of Hawai’i. We watch the ocean from the wraparound lānai of Daylight Mind, a laidback cafe with good coffee and the wifi password “perfectview.” The ever-promised rain is falling, the first real rainfall in six days. A yellow-billed cardinal just visited for our muffin crumbs, and the scent from a foraged plumeria blossom beside my plate transports me back to high school. I wore frangipani essential oil on my wrists then, a strange coral pink elixir in a glass vial from the health food store.

They are one and the same, plumeria and frangipani, but am I one and the same girl, all these years later? Let me extend my gratitude for this moment, I tell whoever I am. Let me remember this moment, when I am back in Canada, sans fish the colour of lemons, or polka-dotted, or with lips of electric blue. We are actually seeing yellow fish in each cresting wave, from a porch in Hawai’i!

“Let me extend my gratitude to you” was something we used to say to each other in high school, my group of friends, a coded way to say erection after some inside joke took root. We had other sayings, too, but they’re safely on my yearbooks’ back pages, and make my daughter’s eyebrows go up when she reads them. But I come back to the idea of gratitude, often, and so this memory is never far from reach.

Is gratitude as powerful without expressing it? Is the act of feeling thankful as good for you when you don’t share it? Is it meant to be good for you? Does it feel more like gloating to the people around you who might not be feeling as blessed? Should this matter? Is sharing any feeling better than keeping it in?

In the presence of people who don’t express thanks, I get grumpy. I wonder what’s wrong with them, how they can assume that the world is just meant to provide everything they need. I wonder if they’ve been handed life on a platter, never felt strife or loss, or if it’s a matter of temperament. I wonder what their parents taught them. Often I can smell the off-gassing of privilege. Beyond the golden rule, what matters most to me as a lesson to pass down to my child, is the imperative to be thankful. To be generous with praise, of people and of situations and of what life is offering.

My husband and I are here, in Hawai’i, with my daughter, eighteen, and her slightly older friend—a friend who is not generous or grateful or the least bit nice to be around. And so I am grumpy, on vacation, when I want to be celebrating. This trip is meant to mark the end of one chapter and help us relax and begin another, a make-up vacation for the one we missed this past summer. I write in the early hours before another tropical day dawns, because my mind is too full.

I recently went through a diagnosis—and surgery, and recovery—for breast cancer. I haven’t told a lot of people, just my close circle and those who’ve needed to know, but it might be time. I have nothing visible to share this, unless they see me naked, which they won’t. So far, because of very early detection, I’m one of the very lucky ones, able to choose no further treatment, even though the standard of care is radiation and/or hormone therapy. I’m teary, just writing this, at my luck. I’m also a new champion of mammography, because without it the cancer would have remained undetected, potentially, for years.

I am not a new convert to feeling thankful. I try to cultivate this practice daily—so when I’m asked if the diagnosis changed me, I pause. Yes, I say. It makes me appreciate the uncertainty of every day, and be even more grateful for life itself.

But why have I not shared this journey much? Would I judge someone in my shoes for sharing it? No. I would celebrate with them, include all the emojis I could. Do I worry about jumping the gun, celebrating prematurely because this disease might come back—might still be in me, lurking elsewhere? Partly. Am I up for the barrage of emotions it might bring up in those who know? Not sure—so far this has been manageable, but that could change with a public announcement. Am I ready for all the concern? I don’t know.

And yet, if I don’t express my gratitude publicly, or out loud, does it seem less genuine? And to whom? Whose opinion counts most here? Who or what is offering these blessings?

Ah, that’s the thing. No longer a follower of organized religion, the word blessing seems contrived, borrowed, misplaced. But it does feel like a blessing, in the old sense of receiving something from beyond oneself. From what source, I cannot say, or have a name that feels comfortable. I don’t believe it’s karma, a reward for good living. The world is full of good people, suffering terribly.

Does it need a name? Or is it simply luck of the draw, a random act of nature, sparing me for the moment while others are not so easily spared? And what about love, and sharing good fortune in that? I wonder this when I post a photo of my family on social media, for one occasion or another, looking happy together. Isn’t it obnoxious, to those who are without?

Am I really a woman who’s so concerned over what people think? First-born, self-employed, Leo in middle age who generally speaks her mind: that’s my identity, not someone worried over impression or truth. And yet, I also believe myself to have empathy. I try to put myself in others’ shoes when possible, and when I do that now, imagining the response of those who are not so fortunate as me, to my sharing of goodness that’s befallen me, it’s not all hip hip hooray, or yay you, go girl, wow, amaze balls—it’s more like, You think you’re so big. Or, as the title of my favourite Alice Munro collection asks: “Who do you think you are?” You’re on a vacation in Hawaii. How lovely for you. How dare you complain about a surly teenager or two?

Aha. That’s the problem. A person isn’t supposed to enjoy life on earth all that much, because it’s in heaven where the good times really happen, and to get there you must give things up. Meanwhile, don’t mention your blessings. Boasting is bad. The devil makes you do it. Whether or not these sentiments were taught to me word for word, in the Catholic Church, they’re what I heard.

And then, too, there is the feeling of airing dirty laundry. The feeling of oversharing. The “ick” response I get in my gut when people share pictures of their actual scars on social media, or publicly grieving day after day, month after month, over the loss of their pet, or breakup stories that go on and on. I don’t blame them—I’ve lost people and animals I love—but I don’t feel like I’m part of that group.

No, I’m part of another group—the ‘good times only’ group. We post rosy pics and status updates that are light and funny and don’t give much away about what’s really going on. A couple of days after my surgery I was posting about writing stuff. All summer long, while the diagnosis and impending trauma hovered over me like a cape of thorns, I shared photos of day trips and ocean vistas. We’ve posted pics with these two teens, all smiles over a fancy dinner, toasting our good fortune, even though I wanted to put one of them at a separate table.

But that’s me expressing thanks… and so the circle continues.

*

There have been beautiful moments during this vacation, and more will come before we have to fly home. But we’ve brought ourselves with us, too. Sometimes it isn’t our best self that emerges, even in a place of such lushness and ease. I’m still a mother, and I overdo it with my daughter and her friend, suggesting things, trying to make sure they’re going to be okay. Even though—or possibly because—they’re moving away from our hometown in less than a month. Six days in and I’m learning to back off. My husband battles with them over the music in the car, plays it all too loudly for my ears, drives too aggressively for my liking, is impatient when he has to wait for the girls. Everywhere you go, there you are. Not just your best self. Not just the worst. All of you. All of me.

And one hundred and forty-two grams less, taken from my right breast. A rather ropey scar to mark the spot that once every so often sends nerve pain shooting through the whole area. They say that’s normal, while the nerves knit back together again. That it’s not a sign of the tumour growing back. The breast will never be normal, but I still have it. It hasn’t been normal for a long time anyway, since even before a reduction ten years ago, it was bigger than the left. Now, it’s the little one—mostly unnoticeable in clothing, but I know which one it is. I know its story, too, and on good days, the scar and the pain make me thankful for how easy I got off, so far.

In every day, in each wave, the potential for brilliance, kindness, joy—or their opposites. Sometimes it is easy to forget this. Sometimes you only see the crashing edge.

*

Two days before we go home, and it’s a new day, with a new set of emotions to navigate. This time, the impending departure of my daughter to distant Montreal really hits me. We’ll be living without a child in the house. Today I feel an identity slipping, a mix of emotions building, a loss of whatever slight control I feel I have over her as a parent.

At the pool, parents play with their kids, or gather joy from watching them in the water, while my daughter sits in her room with her wenchy friend, slowly getting ready to face the day and bring more of their sucky attitudes to the beach. I’m crying, while the vacationers around me drink Piña Coladas and laugh.

It is hard to be grateful for every moment, when they sometimes feel barbed, grenaded, lined with broken glass. Parenting a teenager—even one as independent and sure-footed as mine—is tricky business. But the learning and loving continue in these moments, too; perhaps more so, in the end.

Later the same day, at Disappearing Sands Beach, I remain on the beach while the girls and my husband play in the surf, a sea turtle body-surfing beneath them. The waves are wilder today than the first day we came here; the metaphor so obvious that it seems silly to even note it. But sometimes the easy comparison is the best one. The woman doing headstands in front of me doesn’t have to do them, but even though she tips over, she continues.

My daughter is already gone, really. I can see her, safely navigating the shore breaks, but emotionally she has left life with her parents. I don’t want to cry again, here. There is enough salt. Enough waves. Enough tears were shed by her this morning before we came here, over her feeling trapped between wanting to be home, getting ready to move, and having to stay here for another two days. Between her family and her friend, no love lost between us. But still they rise in me again, these tears. I am torn.

And then there’s the bigger picture: while we’re here, I learn that my sister-in-law is in the hospital with pneumonia and a severe headache from a spinal tap. Another family member is having a cancerous spot on his eyelid removed, and a friend is getting a pacemaker, at just fifty years old—while we’re swimming with turtles. Our biggest concern is which restaurant to try for dinner after snacking on local avocado, iced coffee and afternoon margaritas.

Parenting has been a part of my identity for eighteen years. And now cancer is part of my identity—to what extent I can’t say. It’s early days. Now I can choose to keep quiet about it and carry on as if nothing happened, because I’m all better, right? My well-behaved tumour is gone. My range of motion is 100%. My margins and lymph nodes are clear.

But something did happen, and might happen again. The spectre of cancer is closer for me, according to the statistics. Another thing to add to my list of daily concerns. And yet I try not to go there, or question every move I make, every thought I think, every bite I take. Even if I don’t believe that negative thinking got me here, I do know that positive thinking makes me feel better.

And so, back to gratitude. I am grateful for our last evening on the Big Island, where we drive north and then back south in time to catch a gorgeous sunset. Where our new iPhones catch us enjoying it in “live” mode, so when you touch the screen you can see the waves moving in, our bodies adjusting themselves to best express the moment.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn brought the world’s attention to the idea of being grateful for the present moment in his simple meditation practice: with every breath in, say yes, yes. With every breath out, say thank you, thank you. “Every morning we have 24 brand new hours to live,” he said. “What a precious gift!”

I will try to remember this on the red-eye flight home, after which The Friend will breezily wave and say, not thank you, or what a great trip, but simply Byeeee! On the red-eye nights to come when I don’t know where my daughter is. When she will be miserable living with her friend. When she finds a new place to live but works until four a.m. and walks home alone. When she finally cuts that friend out of her life forever. For now, I extend my gratitude to everything that has allowed us to be here; cancer, employment, health, privilege, love. Mahalo. Aloha. Thank you.

In every wave, alongside debris and unnamed particles, a multitude of yellow fish.

 

Julie Paul is the author of three short fiction collections, including Victoria Butler Book Prize winner The Pull of the Moon, and two poetry collections, including the Spring 2024 release Whiny Baby. She’s currently at work on a novel and a personal essay collection in Victoria, BC, Canada.