The Echoes of the Shore
In the quiet moments of her childhood, when there was no screaming or bruises on her pale skin, Mary-anne found solace in the tranquil environment of the beach. As the waves whispered calming secrets to the shore, and the sand wedged itself between her toes, children would bounce along beside her, their parents close behind with gentle voices and laughter.
Mary-anne didn’t always live near the beach, her childhood was defined by perpetual motion. Her mother, with the partial funds of her own well-off father, never settled down in one place, rather travelled from place to place, drifting through cities and towns like ghosts, leaving behind fractured connections and unspoken traumas. Mary-anne and her two brothers were set on a life of constant travel – never finding their place, or having long term connections, and suffering the abuse of people they never really knew.
Though of all the places she had lived, being by the beach was her favourite. Amidst the instability of her home life, she found refuge in coastal communities, drawn to the timeless allure of the sea. Having always had the spark of an out-doorsy spirit, it was there, amidst the salt kissed air and the endless expanse of the horizon, that she found a place for her to escape – to ride, swim, run, play sports and connect with random kids along the shimmering shorelines -away from the tumultuous nature of her mother and their homes, her spirit buoyed by the rhythm of the waves and the boundless possibilities of the open water.
But even the sanctuary of the shoreline could not shield her from the harsh realities of her upbringing. The echoes of her mother’s volatile nature and the spectre of abuse lingered in the shadows.
As she entered adulthood, she was straight out the door of her abusive household and focused on breaking free from the cycle of dysfunction. She embarked on a journey to forge her own path and follow her passion which at the time was becoming a police officer.
At this time she had excelled in many things throughout highschool, particularly her sports across the board, with ballet being one of her favourites. When it came to the fitness test, she excelled beyond the other candidates and was seen as having great potential. But with the quiet nudge of an officer, she was warned that her mental health needed to be stronger – particularly with some of the terrible things they deal with on the day to day.
Yet, fate had other plans, and motherhood beckoned, starting the journey into another kind of life. Though, from a young age she was set on the concept of the white picket fence life – a husband, children and a peaceful home with a white picket fence. Despite her longing for stability and the idyllic vision of a home by the sea, Mary-anne found herself navigating the choppy waters of single parenthood, looking after four children with a relationship that seemed perpetually on and off again.
She spent a lot of her time moving from rental to rental, her mother following closely behind her footsteps. She felt trapped between her mother’s puppeteering hands, her unstable relationship and the confines of her own mind. Eventually, she made the drastic change to move as far from everything as she could and though she couldn’t afford a nice house by the beach, she chose an area a short drive away, and took her three younger children alone to start a new life.
Her troubles never really diminished, but she found ways of coping away from the strangling hands of her mother. She found a place to bring up her children in what peace she could find alone, despite her struggling mental health which impacted her daily functioning.
As the years unfolded, she found comfort on the sandy dunes. With whatever petrol money she had left and when the sun was just enough to peek through the clouds, she took her children to the calmness of the beach. She played, she ran and swam and watched her children enjoy the softness of the sand and the sparkling waters, and for a moment that was all that mattered, and the stressors of life drifted away in the summer waves.
She watched her children grow amidst the gentle ebb and flow of the tides, their laughter echoing against the cliffs, from playful children to angsty teens, until her oldest was seventeen. And then illness loomed on the horizon, where she found herself diagnosed with stage four cancer from a simple doctor’s appointment aimed at addressing her back pain.
In those last 12 months she enjoyed the presence of Inverloch, the warmth of the sunsets, the peaceful beaches and the timeless beauty of the sea ever changing with the ins and outs of the tide. Mary-anne returned to the shores of her youth, where the ocean met the sky, watching her children walk along the shore following closely behind their gentle voices and laughter which echoed across the waves, paused in a moment of eternity.
