A Sea Change

January 2021

Betty Dalke Wathne

January is a time of reflection and of resolutions. I was speaking to a friend about Transformation and the nature of change.  We wondered how it could happen, when all previous attempts were failures? What makes this decision the genuine one? I don’t understand how it works, this miracle of transformation. There certainly are elements of determination and of motivation, but I think it may simply be the refusal to continue to dwell in the depths. Some months ago, I decided to make the most of the Covid time. I resolved to change, and not knowing how to do that,  I just started living like the person I wanted to be. Making the choices and holding the priorities that mythical-yet-possibly-achievable woman would. Investing my time, thoughts, and energies in a different way than always before.  And the old me, the one that was holding me back, dissolved. I was able to let go of that horrible companion, my crippling depression. Leaving her behind, I felt no regrets and no nostalgia.  Just the sensation of emerging from deep water as my true self.

The Mermaid

B.Wathne

She emerged from the storm-wrack this morning. Her scales fell away.

The wet sand, too yielding, slipped away beneath her feet. But when she trusted it, it supported her, and she stood.

The air against her skin blew harsh, sharper than any current, and the sun dried the tendrils that had dragged at her head for so long. They lifted and drifted, now across her face so that she could not see, now settling in a cloak, hiding her form but revealing everything else.

Delicious new muscles sang, and she wanted to attend that delicate tune, but it was drowned by the tympani of wave and wind.  Incessant, beating – how to endure its rampant insistence? Become deaf again? Float silently once more in her seaweed forest? Drift apart in her lonesome way, without all this bustling buffeting?

For a time she faced her old dwelling place and felt the draw of its dark embrace. 

Then she gulped a deep, deep swallow of air.

Oh, and it burned, that breath.

It tasted of the salt of night-time tears and the uncaring ocean.

It tasted of the spices of hope and promise.

It heated her throat with a thousand I cannots and a thousand and one I wills.

She grasped her last I will, turned on newfound limbs, and strode into the dunes.