The place I’m in reminds me of another place. It is a place where mangoes fall to the ground to meet their end: getting fried by the sun, sweetening the soil to death.
It is a place of my childhood. A place surrounded and divided by water. The place where I tried to teach my grandmother to swim. She’ll probably die without knowing how her body feels when it’s weightless above the waves.
It is ocean and it is jungle. In this place, my son saw his first wild monkey, just like it happened to me in that other place, thousands of miles years ago. this place reminds me of rocks scratching my knees and getting home full of dirt and sweat.
My childhood is something I avoid. Childhood is something I’ll never recover from.
I used to think a place could make me happy. I was naïve like that. I had hope. I would see a tree, a backdrop of perfectly placed clouds and go, “Huh, if only I could be there right now, I would be at peace. At last, a place to breathe easily.”
Nothing prepares you for what life has in store. And in a million years, I wouldn’t have guessed I could reach this level of happiness just because of a few familiar scents and sounds. But here I am, kissing my son, both our cheeks salty and wet. Talking to strangers with intention, just because I feel safe around them. Falling asleep with the toads and frogs singing on the other side of my window. Feeling cringy and ridicule. Pointing to plants, animals and bodies of water, telling my husband and son, “Just like the ones from that other place from my childhood, look.”
A place can be many other places, I’m realizing that at thirty-two.
And, since I’m about to take a dip in the ocean, here’s The element of water, an essay I wrote for my son —included in this publication’s section How to exist— before he was born:
My dear love,
I have been trying to write you another letter with further clarifications about the world. It’s hard to prioritize which order is the right one for a new human to better comprehend the world. So I’m trying my best to go with my gut and intuition, concepts we will explore in the future.
I wanted to tell you about the first environment you met. The first medium you lived in. Water. An aquatic life is what you experienced for approximately 40 weeks.
The amniotic fluid is the protective liquid contained by the amniotic sac of a gravid amniote. This fluid serves as a cushion for the growing fetus, but also serves to facilitate the exchange of nutrients, water, and biochemical products between mother and fetus.
That’s what your first home felt like: pure liquid. And liquids are wet. Water is a liquid, therefore water is wet. You’ll learn to distinguish wet from dry, don’t worry, I know it can be confusing right now.
Wet is one of the properties of water. And water is the main component of any aquatic medium. Like the one you emerged from. So far so good, right? Let’s keep going…