Anthea Wilson takes us on her journey as she visits her love and his home by the sea.
I will travel long and far to get to you, to get to your home by the sea. Leaving my familiar family
surroundings, I plot my escape at the end of each week to run to you. To drive my small white car though the winding weaving tunnels of our city. To see the towering buildings, shimmering lights and breathtaking harbor, casually viewing the great icons of our city through my car window. The roads are bu
sy. I tend to feel like I’m competing with the other cars just to keep up. I make pretend friends with the car behind me and feel their absence when they turn elsewhere.
Further now, great airplanes fly up above full of other people like me traveling to far off destinations away from home. Then a little way past the airport, I hit beach, and immediately the roads change, the people change. Families line the promenade and local hustling bustling restaurants and cafés are ready to take their next order. Beach babes of all sorts line the sand and sea. I’m not there yet, to your home by the sea. Nearly, but not yet.
A few red lights, bends, turns and roundabouts later, I’m driving down the long road that leads to you. An excited feeling creeps into my heart and a smile adorns my face in anticipation for us and our little world by the sea. The sign states that I have made it and I exclaim loudly to myself and my car, “Honey I’m home!”
This small suburb ignites the feeling of being on summer holiday as a young girl, the smell of salt in the air takes me right back there. I meet you at your home, we come together in a long embrace and kisses all over. We then jump in your small black car and we drive around your neighborhood. At the end of your street is our city’s skyline, the same city I traveled through not so long ago to get to you.
Driving along the shore I bask in the beauty of the big blue. I observe dogs taking their owners for a walk along the sand, kite surfers surf the waves and ride the wind as the sky becomes a sea of kites. Cyclists. Cyclists everywhere pretending they are cars. We pull up to our favorite café, the one that opened the same time as our love started. A place where I have scored many free coffees and delicious treats from making friends with the special people that work there. I have spent countless hours chatting away with my favorite baristas.
We spend the afternoon in your neighboring national park, climbing down the steep steps of the cliffs to sit on the rocks by the waves. We share a towel and watch the nearby fisherman cast their lines hoping for the catch of the day. Scuba-divers in their black wetsuits and flippers take on the daunting thrashing of the waves on the rocks and swim out calmly with their heads bobbing up and down in the sea. I wonder what they see down there and envy that I can’t see it too. Big boats and little boats sail past every now again on their own journey.
I strip down to just my tee shirt and undies and I take a dip in the rock pools. I sit in the middle of them and let the water wash over me, cleansing me of life’s mundanities. I let the waves knock me about clutching to seaweed and rocks so I don’t get swept away. All I can taste, touch, see, hear, smell is the sea and I know you’re watching me.
Tired and cold, we leave the cliffs. I always look behind me one last time to say goodbye to the ocean. We climb back up those steep steps and back into your car. We travel down the long road that leads in and out of the park. I watch the trees fly past the window until the horizon becomes beach again, and the sun hangs low in the now pink sky. The evening breeze compliments the calm atmosphere that has now washed over this suburb. I discovered this place because of you, and no matter how far away I may be I’ll always come back to you and your home by the sea.
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