saudade (part 2)

I don't know when it started but the beach has provided me solace for a long time. The deafening roar of the surf, the misty sea-spray of the crashing waves, the abrading grit of the sand, the glistening sparkles of the aquamarine water, the gentle whispers of the salty breeze and the songs of the local inhabitants in the air, land and see inundates all the senses.

Perhaps suggested from "Footprints in the Sand" as a child 'bussed off' to weekly Sunday School, I would periodically visualize walking along the shore hand in hand with a taller gentleman during code of silence (#sue, #secretsociety123), although throughout my life, the image would oscillate with me leaning back on some stronger, protective presence, his arms embracing me, with the rising or setting sun illuminating us. Touch...before learning the love language (full circle (part 9), modern love), it provided so much more, with the presence of safety, trust, nurturing and ... 'je ne sais quoi' ... everything. I felt a flash of that re-membering in a bubble of bliss.

During my travels, I have turned to the shore during moments that I needed a reminder and recharge of my energy and essence, sitting for moments with eyes closed absorbing the warm embrace from the coupling of the sun (masculine)/moon (feminine) and the wind as a gentle caress, visualizing touch. Despite my Virgo Sun (earth), Sagittarius Moon (fire) and Metal (Gold) Pig (face of the girl (part 1), trifecta) I have been told by various 'seers' that there is a lot of the flighty air in me and that it would take a partner that could bring me down to the Earth to ground me and balance that energy. While I always felt grounded after my moments on the beaches, I often times felt an air of bittersweetness...was that a trait of the Metal Pig or a precursor to saudade?

As noted in saudade (part 1), I was not prepared when Yoon Se-Ri (CLoY - Episode 4) found herself in the outdoor marketplace talking to friends who were no longer there, with the scene showing the first flashbacks to the young girl sitting on the beach with the setting sun and counting. The body has a way of keeping score and I found the tears well up and fall without initially understanding the emotions behind the trigger. Fear, loneliness, perhaps a smidgeon of abandonment...yet, when Ri Jeong-Hyeok raised his arm with a candle as a beacon of light beckoning the little girl home, the breath I finally released was quickly followed by incontrollable sobs. I had to pause the series to let my body release what the little girl had buried all these years.

I had known about the incident in elementary school when I waited for hours to be picked up from school, but it was a story with no actual memories (ftale, moments that matter (part 1)). As with safe haven, my body knew something my conscious mind did not. Over the remaining episodes, it unfolds that the little girl on the beach came with her stepmother and was instructed to wait while her stepmother went to find them something to drink. After a spell, she starts counting, trying to convince herself that her stepmother will be back by the time she gets to 100; however, when she gets to 99, she restarts the count. Strangers eventually find her passed out on the beach.

As with standing taller, Se-Ri's stepmother, much like my mother, was experiencing her own unhappiness, and struggled with a daughter who reflected someone that they were not and exhibited innocence and kindness that they didn't believe they deserved. By the time I got to the same scene in the marketplace the second time I binge watched the series, my subconscious had released snippets of the repressed memories of the little girl, who was at Southside Elementary and had assured the last adult to leave the building, perhaps a teacher, that one of my parents was on his/her way to pick me up.

As the sky turned darker, I also had told myself stories as to why no-one had come yet as I looked out at the empty parking lot, with my heart skipping a beat each time I saw headlights in the distance only to experience a dash of disappointed which I quickly pushed away when the car(s) kept driving past me. Like Se-Ri on her hospital bed after listening to her mother's recorded musings of regrets (CLoY - Episode 14), I have been able to reflect on the event from the perspective of my parents (full circle (part 8)), who as immigrants, were working overtime or going to night school in order to better their lot in life, and as with any other day, were banking on their children getting home via the reliable school bus, forgetting the extracurricular activities that kept one at school.

Be that as it may, who would that child be today had she experienced those moments from the perspective of the universe rather than that from a girl with all the hope, trust and love from the innocence of the womb, feeling like she had to apologize for being born, much like Se-Ri? Perhaps much of the tears were less for the memories but for the grief of a childhood that should have been.