The Memories We Will, and Have Loved
Gill, MA
2021, Senior, Creative Writing
Right before we enter the shore of the East Sea, I hesitate to step into the sand. I watch as my family moves further ahead of me.
My mom turns and sees me pause. She yells, “Still? You never change.”
I stand and wonder. Why am I pausing here? But I know the answer: it is because I hate sand.
The first time I stepped in sand was at La Jolla Beach in San Diego. I didn’t like the texture of it touching my feet, its hotness, the granular sensation of sand against skin. The terrible feelings have multiplied over time: when sand touches my hands, it sticks to my palms and to everything I touch, like my phone and my towel. Even the thought of sand makes my skin prickle, and I feel like I need a shower. Sand is even worse under water, where the waves drive sand into my sandals in a thick sludge that I cannot shake off. I usually appreciate the wind for blowing away the heat, but at the beach it also causes sand to swirl in the air. It travels, hits my face, gets knotted into my hair. Sand gets into my eyes, and against the burning pain, I shed tears to remove the grains. It also finds its way into my mouth, so that I bite down on it and spit out grains of sand.
I do suppose sand looks good with the sea, at least from a distance. I say this because I love the sea, the water.
I have always been mesmerized and befuddled by the grandiosity of the ocean: the calm horizon, the sound of waves hitting the shore, and the clouds passing in the sky like jellyfish treading water. When you’re floating in the ocean on an inner tube, letting the current guide you, you don’t need music or your phone: you have the sea and the sky. The slow-moving clouds heal you. Your problems and thoughts disappear. As the sun starts to sink in the sky, your family calls you in for dinner. The reds and yellows of the sunset create a beautiful reflection on the seashore and bounce across the sea. This scene is not replicable by picture or drawing, despite my best efforts. Of all the countless pictures and drawings of ocean sunsets by famous artists, none measure up to the real thing.
Thus, I have a love-hate relationship with oceans. The line that separates the water and the land is also the line between my beloved and my despised.
When my family has visited the oceans, I always end up losing my hatred of sand to the beauty of the sea. Before we arrive, I always make a bold statement that I will stay inside the car for an hour or two because I hate sand and I don’t want to step in it, but I always relent in the end—and I have never regretted doing so. In addition to my love for the water, it satisfies me to see my brother, who loves the sand, smiling and laughing as he builds sandcastles and dips his body in sand and seawater.
In school, I am continuously exposed to more awareness of ocean pollution. Media reports are full of stories about worsening ocean pollution and new technologies being developed to solve the pollution problem. For example, I recently watched a Vox report on YouTube titled “Why 99% of ocean plastic pollution is ‘missing’.” The video explained that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is double the size of Texas, which would make it the second-largest island in the world. But most of the plastic in the ocean is made up of microscopic pieces, too small to notice individually, that are being consumed by ocean creatures and entering our food chain. When I am enjoying myself in the sea, I’m not conscious of the fact that an accidental drink of seawater could put bits of plastics into my body. This knowledge disgusts me more than the sand.
I’ve consumed several other videos about the sea-cleaning frontier. Dazzling technology has been created to clean up big waste from the ocean’s surface. For example, 4Ocean created a sea mobile that floats on water with two underwater wings. As the device floats across the surface of the sea, its claw-like wings pick up waste. Another is the Seabin Project, a pump and bin-based device that sucks in water, but traps trash and oil before releasing the water back into the ocean.
While these innovative technologies are helping the world step a foot closer to a cleaner environment, they do not address the problem that Vox highlighted: microplastics.
Back on the shore of the East Sea, I think of Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
In August 2016, President Barack Obama declared one of the largest protected ecological areas in the world by expanding the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument located near Hawaii. The monument includes Midway Atoll and consists of one of the most diverse ecological systems in the world, along with some of the largest seabird gathering sites. However, this area is also harshly polluted; the sea and the land around it are literally covered in plastic waste. A CNN documentary showed the severity of the situation with footage of multiple dead birds that have stomachs full of plastic. “It smells horrible,” a reporter said.
We’ve all seen rocks near the shore littered with cans and other waste. As I brave the sand of the East Sea, I imagine I am on Midway Atoll. I think of how this beautiful sea might become filled with plastic and a “hauntingly bad” smell. A smell that will stop visitors from coming to the sea and frequenting the surrounding stores and towns. People will shield themselves from the horrors of global warming, including rising sea levels and wretched plastic contamination.
I see my brother and my dad playing “sand castle war,” a traditional Korean game where players make a mound of sand and place a flag on the very top. The players then take turns swiping away as much sand as they can with one hand, seeking to amass the most sand without making the flag fall.
In the current state of our environment, our ecosystem is the flag, and the mound looks like a fully eaten apple. Only the core remains, and the flag is barely surviving. We have each taken as much sand as we can, yet once the flag falls, this game—our environment—is doomed.
They say that the opposite of “love” is not “hate,” but “loved.” In the future, we might stand by the seashore thinking back over our lives, over the times we have laughed and loved. Even if you hate the sand, like I do, the ocean connects us all, from where I stand by the East Sea to every shore of the Earth. We must change how we are treating the ocean, or else the ocean that we love will become the ocean that we loved, and we will have nothing left of it but our memories.
Reflection
Reflection
I love to daydream. While writing this essay and researching, simulations of the plastic-filled ocean and cities sinking in water haunted me with disappointment and hopelessness. Recently, I went on a family trip to the East Sea. Although I love family trips, I have not had a chance to go on one due to academics abroad. This essay is primarily based on my experience and the memories I made from this trip. Almost hypocritically, I love the sea and the oceans but not the sand before entering the waters, and this fact—my love-hate relationship—is a unique memory of mine. I wanted to touch and re-enlighten the memories of my readers and their unique experiences with the ocean. I wanted to send the message that we are all stakeholders of the changing oceans, that we are all, personally, a part of the problem and the solution. I hope that in the future, one will remember their memories they cherish and change. This change does not have to be big—it could be using an eco-bag instead of a plastic bag in the store. And if we, as humans, bring this problem to a personal level, not only can we preserve the oceans, but we can also continuously make beautiful memories we will love.