The first swim is never easy. It’s more an act of defiance than anything enjoyable. I walk out to my waist, shivering as the water rises. My hands hover; my shoulders are curled in. I hop over the waves and look out beyond the rocks, past the pier, to where I know she is.
It’s a decision, I tell myself firmly as I force my shoulders in and gasp, exhale rapidly and do everything I can not to scream at the bitterness of it, the icy, icy cold. But I have done it; I am down. Now I just have to move, keep moving and ignore every impulse from my brain that is telling me: leave the water now.
I leave the sea floor, leave my depth and strike out, past the boats, the strokes coming more smoothly now as I settle into the temperature and adjust. I never swim parallel to the shore. For me the whole point of swimming is escape: leaving the beach, leaving land behind. I swim out past the pier, to the outer rocks until I can see the secret beach. The Atlantic, at first forbidding and cold, is now warm and smooth, holding me. I feel so secure and safe, they are here.
My mother and my father are swimming with me, smiling at me. Ais sits on the corner of the pier, smoking, her face scrunched in the morning sun, her legs extended, always seeking a tan. Dad dives and surfaces like a whale, his black hair gleaming and wet. Mam is so happy to see me, so happy to be swimming with me again. She is beautiful, tanned, wearing her gold jewellery, and she gives little tosses with her head as she moves through the water.
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Me, I tread the surface, my legs barely moving, my shoulders out of the water, my arms, my hands pulling the water through them and effortlessly keeping me afloat. I feel happy again, truly happy. I can feel them, sense them. I know they are here, in this tiny scrap of water, deep and green.
I know this is where they came when they died.
The sea conspires to wash my grief away momentarily. Just as I placed my clothes in a heap on the beach, so too I put down the weight of my grief for the half of my family I lost over a shocking and brutal seven years. The sea holds me, minds me, lets me rest. I cannot take my grief into the water; they do not sit or meld together. The water is too green, too clear, too clean for something as murky, difficult and complicated as grief.
So here I am, swimming with my dead parents, treading water and dreaming. I love being back in the sea again and want to stay here forever. Everything I know about the sea, all its secrets, were taught to me by watching them swim. I try to uncover its truth, unmask its secrets by immersing myself in it. I come at different times of the day, but often early, before breakfast, often to a tide that is far out. It feels like nearly a penance until I feel the freshly minted sand beneath my feet and know that this is not penance; it is privilege.
I remember swims the way I remember books I have read and loved. There are swims that will stay with me all my life. Once, after an enormous storm, it had been raining for days, and the sea was boiling. Mam and Dad had gone for their morning swim – we were in our caravan in Wexford. As we turned over in our beds, Dad flung open the caravan door and told us to get our togs on and come down to the beach, now.
Sleepily, half-awake, we obeyed and ran the short distance to the beach. The caravan was beside dunes which gave onto an enormous beach: a huge sweep of sand, bookended on one side by a pier full of trawlers, rocks on the other, with an endless arpeggio of beaches beyond. Normally crowded and busy, in this weather, at this time of the morning, it was deserted.
I began swimming in winter whenever I could. I took overnight trips to Kerry in November, January, drove 200 miles, went straight to the beach when I got there
We ran down the dunes and dropped our towels and ran for the water, where Mam was being tossed around by the waves. They were enormous, frightening in their height, but we all got in. Dad took us out, beyond where the waves were breaking. The water was surging and roaring and strong, green. Above all else I will never forget the colour of the water and how I felt: safe. Out of my depth, tossed relentlessly about like a cork, but my mother and father swam round us, circled us, and they were laughing. It began to rain – hard, fast, fat raindrops, but we kept swimming.
Were they mad? Possibly. But my parents were alike in that they both loved it; they were both swimmers, sea creatures, sea-discoverers. You had to swim in everything, in anything.
After the deaths of my father, my mother, my sister, swimming became a place for me to be, to rest, to put my endless burdens down and stop the running circles of thought and sadness that consumed me. I began swimming in winter whenever I could. I took overnight trips to Kerry in November, January, drove 200 miles, went straight to the beach when I got there, often in darkening skies, threw myself in. That first gasp and initial shock was like coming back to life for me in the midst of numbing, crippling grief.
Coming home to where there was no sea, I went to the pool – always a poor substitute, but necessary. I cried as I swam punishing amounts of lengths, my goggles filling with salt water even if the rest of me was washed in chlorine. In spring and summer, I carved out every bit of time possible in Kerry and swam every chance I could. I medicated with the sea.
When I wasn’t swimming, I surrounded myself physically with everything I could to remind me of it. I divided my share of my mother’s collection of seashells and placed them in every room of my house. She never left a beach without a shell or a stone, so I add to the bowls and vases, the glass jars full of the pale white curiosities she favoured, bringing bags home after every trip to Kerry. These collections are a constant reminder of all the swims she had: alone, with Dad, with us, with her beloved grandchildren. They mean the sea is never out of my eyeline.
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I am never not thinking about the sea. It laps at the outer edges of my consciousness, my thoughts, all the time. It’s a longing that only quiets or subsides when I am there. I’m cursed to live in a landlocked county that is so far from where I love.
Where I want to be is a tiny corner of southwest Kerry, on the Ivereagh peninsula, a series of tiny, stunning beaches and coves on the Kenmare River and around one of the headlands, on the Atlantic. Caherdaniel is the village, Derrynane is the harbour which hosts a sweep of famous beaches, but my soul-palace, my haven is on the other side of Lamb’s Head, the peninsula that bookends the long beach in Derrynane.
There was no choice involved: the sea called them, called something in their souls, and by immersing their bodies, they answered the call. It was ingrained in them
This is the place they loved the best, Rath, a tiny beach near Caherdaniel, Kerry. This is the pier, the sea they came to every morning before breakfast. First brought here by their best friends, the Hurleys, after a trip to the Middle East with the UN in the 1970s, August weekend trips turned into weeks, turned into renting places, turned into spending as much time as they could here in a mobile home facing the sea. They walked down a fuchsia-filled boreen to this small grey beach, to this toy pier with its handful of boats. They negotiated the steps, covered with slimy green seaweed, and unfailingly launched themselves into the water every day.
There was no choice involved: the sea called them, called something in their souls, and by immersing their bodies, they answered the call. It was ingrained in them. More than habit, it was a need, a deeply defined necessity of purpose that they started the day with. It brought them great happiness and great closeness as a couple.
They both grew up by the sea around Dublin, and all our summers were centred around beaches. Their love for swimming was passed onto us as completely as the dark hair, the sallow skin, the hazel eyes that run through our genes. This love created an avid wanting, a craving that swims wherever it can, in the Irish sea, in Dublin and Wexford where the sea is often impenetrable and murky, can never satisfy.
When I lost them, when Dad died suddenly, when Mam died quickly, when Aisling’s death almost broke us all, the sea kept me alive. Breath on breath, stroke on stroke, go out as far as you can
And then there is the Atlantic, wild, clear, unpredictable and magnificent. It holds secrets you have to go deep and far to hear. It’s a startling, vivid green that other seas dream of being. Yet it holds qualities of night that are visible during the day, it’s a green of sleep and dreams and rest, it’s the green of peace and perfection, it’s the work of the moon, the shifting of the tide, it’s mercurial and magical, and when I swim in this water, I know I am home. This green, this impossible green that intensifies and builds into a combination of white, turquoise, aqua, blue layers, this is my soul’s colour, pure and the best part of who I am – it is my parents’ great gift to me.
Yes, there is a sense of danger, especially when you swim like we do, out far and way beyond our depth, but we grew up knowing this is where we were meant to be. We learned early of the veils, the hovering between worlds, how easy it would be to stop and slip beneath the depths, how beautiful swimming is but oh, its darkness, its danger, its mysteries.
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They taught us all this without ever telling us. It was in their eyes when they looked at the sea and shed their clothes and went straight in. It was in their happiness and confidence in the water. To be with the best of who they were, all we had to do was follow them. The sea to us, whether in Wexford or Kerry, Carne or Rath, was play, fun, light. There would be darkness enough in the winters.
When I lost them, when Dad died suddenly, when Mam died quickly, when Aisling’s death almost broke us all, the sea kept me alive. Breath on breath, stroke on stroke, go out as far as you can. It doesn’t matter how wild and turbulent the waves are; you can navigate anything. If you stay calm and focused, the sea, the lightest, darkest force on our planet, this body of water that connects every continent, every person on the planet, will hold you. You have to trust you will be held, that the waves, if you allow them, will carry you back to shore. It’s in you, the power to make it back – this is what they taught you, this is how they made you, this is who you are.
This is an edited extract from This Is My Sea by Miriam Mulcahy, published by Bonnier Books on August 24th
