Coquina

By Angelique Burns 

As the sun beats down, toasting the seashell sand on the beach, the saltwater splashes with a frightful intensity along the shoreline then rushes back into the ocean as if chased by an invisible predator. It leaves behind shallow water and freshly tilled beige sand, along with all the creatures that burrow within it. I love to feel the coquina tickling my toes as they burrow themselves over back to safety after the tide pulls them once again from the sand to deposit them inches away to another location. 

As a child, I would stand still on the shoreline watching the cool white capped tide flow back and forth over my feet for hours. The rhythm of the ocean was hypnotizing; standing on the beach was just about the only time I could stand still(I know now that I was a child with undiagnosed ADHD).  There was just something about the white salty foam washing the hot sunbaked sand over my feet and back into the ocean; the sand felt as though it was melting away from under me taking my worries away with it, while those tiny little shells tickled my feet.  

But what I didn’t realize then was that it was a sort of meditation.  

A quieting of the mind.  

I did not fully understand that I was starting to block out the toxicity of my home life.  A coping strategy I became so good at that it wasn’t until my forties that I learned wasn’t normal, and I was part of a group I never knew existed.  

Children of addicted parents.  

There seems to be a label for everything these days.  

We didn’t think of it as an addiction back then when the pills were prescribed by a physician. Mom took pills. Lots and lots of pills.  Eleven different pain killers or muscle relaxers a day to be specific. But they were prescribed- so they couldn’t be bad right? The pain was real, the doctors know what’s right, so who are we to question them? Oh, how thingshave changed since those days.  

We also didn’t discuss mental health as we do now. Even if we had,I was a child, no one would have discussed it with me anyway.  I just knew that I didn’t make noise if mom was in bed. And if she was awake, the noise was for outdoors play only and silence was for inside. If the phone rang, I answered fast before the answering machine started that loud clicking as the tape kicked in, and I knew better than to invite friends over, never knowing if it was a good day or a bad day to have company.  

So, I just never had company. 

I spent many years navigating around mood swings that I became an expert on body language. I’ve had people tell me that’s a sign of being an empath, so I wonder how many empaths are created out of a childhood full of trauma?  

A good day meant mom may have had enough sleep to tolerant of my friends. This was usually a day that started with her up early wearing a bathing suit, a thick layer of coconut scented Coppertone Dark Tanner on her skin with a faint hint of lemon and peroxide that she would spray in her hair for that sun touched blond look, and the overwhelming smell of Kool Menthols always in the air. I would wake up to Eurythmics or maybe a Bonnie Tyler tune playing loudly from the stereo in the living room. She would be cleaning or ironing leaving a heavy scent of lemon pledge and that weird spell of burnt starch that coated the bottom of iron in a sticky brown layer that never seemed to come off in the air(Mom had the most startling bright, white, stiff, starched tuxedo shirts for work I have ever seen). Shortly after, she would take a break to lay on the hot plastic lawn chair, baking her skin into a deep brown tan my skin never managed to reach.  

A bad day?  

That would start with banging doors or pots and pans to subtly wake me up. This meant all my plans (if I bothered to attempt to make plans) were about to be canceled. I was about to spend the day trying to appease mom’s mood until she either went to work or went out with her friends to the bar. I would nervously look for the opportunity to call my friends to say I wasn’t coming while trying to sweep up dog hair just the way mom wanted it the first time so I didn’t get yelled at, praying for the moment she worked it out of her system so I could close myself up in my room to read my newest novel while blasting some anger managing music of my own. This was my metal stage in life.  

In contrast to the rest of the house that was brightly lit by the Florida sun beaming through old jalousie windows that never seemed to stay in place, my sanctuary was a cave of dark gloom with Tapestries of Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath hung from the ceiling, while posters of Megadeath, Queensrÿche, Slayer, Anthrax and many more were plastered where once the bright colors of Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Whitney Houston and other pop stars once graced my walls.   

I got good at coming up with excuses as to why I had to hang at my friends’ homes, and they couldn’t come to mine. I think a few knew more than they let on, like my best friend Amy. Her mom and my mom were close as well, so when I think back on all the times, I was invited to spend weekends at their house I wonder how much of that was to give me a break from home. 

Amy was the only one that could come to my house at any time uninvited. 

She knew the rules. She didn’t come over often.   

On the occasions when mom was off work and in a mood to deal with me, she would pack her old Chevette up with lawn chairs, shovels, towels, dark tanning lotion for her and a high SPF for my pale pasty skin that would inevitably have sun poisoning before the day was through, and we would hit the beach.  

These were VERY good days. These were the days that I fell in love with the beach. 

I never got yelled at there.  

I could be whatever I wanted to be. 

But most of all I was at peace there. The sun shined, the misty salty air tangled my unruly curls, and the hot sand rubbed off any stress I was feeling as I did the crab run across it to get the coolsand at the water’s edge as if I was a rough stone being tumbled in a rock tumbler to become a shiny new bauble, while the sounds of the white foam hitting the shore became my soul reviver.  

Now as an adult I can still find that peace, I just need to put my feet in the dirt to calm my mind. Just a few minutes and I can see the world and any problems I’m facing just a little bit clearer.  

Feet to the earth.  

Toes in the sand. 

This is how I heal my soul.