I don’t know what I’m feeling.

If the limbic system is wordless, then maybe I shouldn’t search for a label, but an image.

I’m feeling ocean.

I’m feeling ocean as it felt on the swim I took on Sunday afternoon, before we checked out of the hotel Monday morning. The hotel was an old Victorian beach house, and sharing a room with my high school friend Claire was a great idea. We debriefed reunion events in our PJs every night.

The sea at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, was heavy with the pull of Hurricane Debby. On Saturday, the waves pounded and I chose discretion as the better part of valor, not even putting on my swimsuit, wading in my shorts. Bits of shell and sand swirled around my calves.

I grew up swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. I know it. Respect it.

When I first took Trent to the beach, I didn’t realize he had never been in the surf. He came up from his first wave with a bloody forehead. I taught him the two choices: over or under, and guidelines for choosing. But I was too late. We left the beach early with his head pounding.

When swimming in rough surf, there are three dangers:

Wave frequency. The waves come so often that just as you’re coming up for air, the next wave is upon you. It’s exhausting and you cannot allow yourself to get exhausted.

Wave power. The force that crashes onshore and recedes is mighty. It throws a swimmer toward land and then sucks them back, making it harder to get out of the surf than to get in. Sometimes the only way out is to ride a wave to dissipation, belly and knees scraping on sand, swimsuit filling with grit, skirting the flailing legs of people high-stepping backward to get out of your way.

Undertow. The one you can’t see is the most dangerous. In that moment between waves you think you can rest, but if you look to shore you realize you’re being pulled south and east. When this happens to a swimmer, the red-suited lifeguards leap to their feet, high on their giant white chairs, whistles blowing, arms signaling, “Come to shore now!”

Mom, back from visiting my brother for his birthday, looking at the building where she has lived for eight years, asking, “Which door do we go in?” is wave power.

Mom, asking repeatedly how long it will take me to drive to Cincinnati when I’ve told her at least half a dozen times that I’m flying, is wave frequency.

Mom, perched on the stool outside the entrance to her building, while I walked toward her after parking the car.

“Why didn’t you go inside, Mom?”

“My key didn’t work.”

Her weathered fingers clutch her metal apartment door key, not the plastic fob that opens all exterior doors.

Mom and I are in the undertow.

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Chewing the Cud of Good

Thankful for fresh starts.