The Sound of the Sea
Mar. 7th, 2011 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsol You know what sounds like the sea? My dog Belle when she snores.
We were on vacation in Hawaii, walking along the beach at Punalu’u. The sand was a dark black and absorbed the heat of the sun readily; my son and I could walk along the surf where the water kept our feet cool, or we could walk up above the tide line where we could walk on patches of dune grass, but in between the sand was too hot to permit a leisurely stroll, and there we were obliged to wear sandals. We mostly stuck to the wet sand with the waves lapping over our feet. I carried the sandals. My son looked for shells.
He had filled his pockets already with various bivalves and cowries. I had told him about making cowrie-shell necklaces, but he didn’t want to make things; he wanted to collect interesting shells and then forget them in his pockets, only to be discovered later after removal from the washing machine, too late to keep the rest of the laundry from smelling like bouillabaisse. At least, that had been my experience with his previous shell-hunting forays.
We were about a half-mile away from the car, and I was about to put on the brakes and call for a course-reversal, when my son began sprinting through the surf towards something sticking partially out of the sand. A hundred feet down the beach he stopped and picked at whatever it was, then waved me up frantically. I jogged over and looked. It was the narrow end of a large shell, a Triton shell I imagined, whorled with beautiful crescent-moon patterns, jutting from the black sand.
My son fell to his knees and set to work excavating around it with both hands. He soon had it dug out. Even encrusted with black sand, it was obviously complete and not full of holes – a rare find. The boy ran it down to where the water was and turned it over and over in the waves, washing it off. He brought it back and we admired it. It was probably ten inches long, patterned with red and brown swirls, with a flaring opening and a high polish. My son grinned.
On a whim he held the opening up to his ear and he listened. His eyes widened. “Wow,” he said. He held the shell to his ear for a solid minute, then pulled it away and held it out to me.
“Listen to it, Dad,” he urged me. “It sounds like the sea.”
I smiled. “Sure it does,” I said.
“You should try it,” my son pressed. “You can hear waves and everything.”
“That’s the sound of the ambient noise around you,” I explained. “When it enters a closed chamber with a resonant surface like a shell, the noise builds upon itself and sounds like the crashing of waves.”
“Don’t you want to hear what it sounds like?” asked my son.
“No, I’ve heard it before. It’s kind of interesting once; then it’s not any more. C’mon, let’s get to the car and head back to the bungalow. I could use a beer.”
We walked back along the shore until the parking lot was just above us; then we sprinted across the burning sand instead of putting on our sandals.
**
Eddie was the bell clerk and caretaker of the group of bungalows. He was an affable Kanaka Maoli, as broad as he was tall, with thick black hair and a seemingly inexhaustible store of tacky Hawaiian shirts. He was weeding the flowerbeds when we got back in. “Hey, Mister S,” he said, wiping the sweat from his face and making himself filthy in the process. His eyes fell upon my son’s shell and he broke into a huge smile. “Hey there, little man, looks like you brought a good one home!”
My son proudly handed the shell over to Eddie, who whistled. “That’s a beauty right there, yes sir. You don’t see a shell that nice most of the time, unless you buy it. You could sell that for twenty bucks right now down at the souvenir store.”
“I’m not selling it,” my son said. “I’m going to keep it by my bed and listen to the waves.”
“A-OK!” said Eddie. He held the shell up to his ear and listened for a long time. Then he handed it back to my son. “Mahalo, nui loa, much obliged my friend,” he said. “Did you let your Dad have a listen?”
“He didn’t want to,” my son said sadly.
“Oh, hey mister,” said Eddie, scolding me jokingly. “You can’t leave the islands until you’ve heard the ocean in a seashell. It’s part of the island life. That’s the kind of thing makes living on Hawaii worthwhile.” Eddie always seemed blissed out on his own existence, which I supposed would actually be a pretty good way to go through life.
“I dunno, I feel like a tourist doing that sort of stuff,” I said.
“Well then, do it inside where you can’t be embarrassed by people seeing you!” Eddie suggested.
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied. I have a stubborn streak, and I don’t like to feel pushed into doing anything, even trivial things.
“Well, I don’t know what you guys have planned for the rest of the day,” Eddie said, turning serious, “but I hope it includes doing stuff under a roof. It is going to RAIN, big-time downpour. I made some sandwiches and lemonade and stuff and put it in your kitchenette. You better plan on being in there soon, because you are gonna see the sky OPEN UP!”
“Thanks, Eddie,” I said, stepping up to the front door of the bungalow. “Sandwiches and lemonade sounds really good right now.”
“A-OK!” Eddie said, and got back to his gardening.
**
Eddie was right, because it started raining just after we ate lunch. Fat drops splatted on the windows such that you couldn’t actually see much of anything through them. The sound of rain drumming on the roof was hypnotic; I decided to sit down and do the crossword. My son curled up on his bed with his new shell pressed to his ear and dozed off.
Soon it was dark, and I couldn’t tell if it was dark because of the time or because it was raining so hard. I didn’t care. I checked on my son to see he was still snoozing, then had two beers in quick succession. There is something about ice cold beer on a rainy day that screams ‘VACATION’ to me. I sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. There was a rerun of a football game on. I started to watch it. The beers must have caught up with me; with no pressing responsibilities and no immediate personal needs, I dropped off.
I was startled awake by feeling something clammy on my face. I batted it away with a hand and sat up. My son was standing next to the couch. The shell had fallen down to the carpet.
“You almost broke it!” my son whined, stooping to pick up his shell.
“I was sleeping,” I murmured, stretching. “Why’d you put that smelly thing on me anyway?”
“I wanted you to hear it,” my son said insistently. “You won’t listen to my shell at all.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to put it on my ear while I’m sleeping. I just don’t want to listen to it.”
“It’s the sea! It sounds like the sea in there, and you don’t even like it!” My son was crying.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll listen to your shell, all right? Don’t worry.” I picked up the shell and went into the kitchenette.
I filled a pot full of water and a little bit of salt, put the lid on it, and put it on the burner. My son frowned.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to clean the shell,” I said. “Right now it’s kind of stinky. It smells like the sea. For all we know there are bits of dead mollusk inside there right now. I’m going to get it all cleaned up and nice smelling, and then we’ll listen to it together.”
My son looked at the pot. “You’re going to clean it…by boiling it?” he asked.
“That’s the right way to clean shells,” I said.
He shook his head slowly side to side. “No,” he said, “you can’t boil my shell.”
“Why not?” I asked, searching through the drawers for some tongs.
“YOU CAN’T BOIL MY SHELL.” My son’s fists were balled and he glared at me. He was biting his lip. There was blood. I stopped what I was doing and crouched down in front of my son.
“Hey,” I said. “Easy there. Easy. Please don’t be upset. What’s the matter?”
My son shook his head back and forth. A little snot was coming out of his nose. “I don’t want for you to boil it,” he said. “It would be bad.”
“Then we won’t boil it,” I said soothingly. “Let me turn the heat off, and….”
I almost jumped out of my skin. There was something on the kitchen window. It was about as big as my foot, a pale peach color, and slowly moving diagonally upwards. I realized it was on the outside of the window, leaving a trail of some kind of goo behind it that the rain was trying to wash away. I stepped up close to the window and viewed it from below. It was like a giant snail of some kind … no. It was whatever creature had made the shell my son had found, but it was like a landlubber snail instead of a sea mollusk, with a slimy foot propelling that beautiful shell along. In the very center of the foot was something like a tongue that squirmed against the glass.
The lightning flashed, and then Eddie was standing on the other side of the kitchen. He was wearing a yellow poncho over his Hawaiian shirt, and rain was streaming off of it. He wasn’t smiling.
“You shoulda just listened to the shell, man,” he said.
“Eddie?” I said. There were two more Kanaka Maoli behind him.
“Now don’t make this too hard on us, Mister S,” Eddie pleaded, coming forward.
I threw the hot water at him, but then my son grabbed one of my ankles. Before I could shake him loose the other two fellows were on me. They smelled like sandalwood soap and suntan lotion. They had me around my arms and were throwing me to the floor. I kicked out, and I heard the sickening sound of my son crying out in pain. Then Eddie’s weight was pinning me and his voice was just behind my head.
“C’mon now,” he said, lightning flashing again. “It’s only the sea.” He pressed something cold to my head.
Something entered my ear.
**
We sat out on the beach in recumbent chairs, my son and I. My son had a fat lip. The rain had departed and it was sunny again. We lay on top of our towels, watching the surf coming in. Each of us had a shell, and we listened to the musical sounds of the rolling ocean waves.
I turned to my son. “I really am sorry about kicking you like that,” I told him.
He smiled. “I know,” he said. “It’s okay.”
It was a beautiful day in Hawaii. We had nothing we needed to do, nowhere we needed to be. Sadly, though, in a few days we would need to get back on our plane, go back to our home on the mainland, and resume our ordinary lives. Oh, there would be a few changes. There might be some special errands we would have to run. We might need to go places, say things; perhaps make a few deliveries. And there was the special package we were having shipped home, too. It was a box full of souvenirs – shells, mostly – that we would be disposing of when we got home. I didn’t know what we would be doing with it, exactly, but I didn’t care. The shells would tell us.
It was liberating to think that no matter where we went, we would be bringing the relaxed state of mind of the islands with us. Regardless of the troubles that surely lay ahead of us, regardless of the trying times that were to come, we knew we could always lie back and put a shell to our ears.
Then we would hear the sound of the sea, and everything would be A-OK.
We were on vacation in Hawaii, walking along the beach at Punalu’u. The sand was a dark black and absorbed the heat of the sun readily; my son and I could walk along the surf where the water kept our feet cool, or we could walk up above the tide line where we could walk on patches of dune grass, but in between the sand was too hot to permit a leisurely stroll, and there we were obliged to wear sandals. We mostly stuck to the wet sand with the waves lapping over our feet. I carried the sandals. My son looked for shells.
He had filled his pockets already with various bivalves and cowries. I had told him about making cowrie-shell necklaces, but he didn’t want to make things; he wanted to collect interesting shells and then forget them in his pockets, only to be discovered later after removal from the washing machine, too late to keep the rest of the laundry from smelling like bouillabaisse. At least, that had been my experience with his previous shell-hunting forays.
We were about a half-mile away from the car, and I was about to put on the brakes and call for a course-reversal, when my son began sprinting through the surf towards something sticking partially out of the sand. A hundred feet down the beach he stopped and picked at whatever it was, then waved me up frantically. I jogged over and looked. It was the narrow end of a large shell, a Triton shell I imagined, whorled with beautiful crescent-moon patterns, jutting from the black sand.
My son fell to his knees and set to work excavating around it with both hands. He soon had it dug out. Even encrusted with black sand, it was obviously complete and not full of holes – a rare find. The boy ran it down to where the water was and turned it over and over in the waves, washing it off. He brought it back and we admired it. It was probably ten inches long, patterned with red and brown swirls, with a flaring opening and a high polish. My son grinned.
On a whim he held the opening up to his ear and he listened. His eyes widened. “Wow,” he said. He held the shell to his ear for a solid minute, then pulled it away and held it out to me.
“Listen to it, Dad,” he urged me. “It sounds like the sea.”
I smiled. “Sure it does,” I said.
“You should try it,” my son pressed. “You can hear waves and everything.”
“That’s the sound of the ambient noise around you,” I explained. “When it enters a closed chamber with a resonant surface like a shell, the noise builds upon itself and sounds like the crashing of waves.”
“Don’t you want to hear what it sounds like?” asked my son.
“No, I’ve heard it before. It’s kind of interesting once; then it’s not any more. C’mon, let’s get to the car and head back to the bungalow. I could use a beer.”
We walked back along the shore until the parking lot was just above us; then we sprinted across the burning sand instead of putting on our sandals.
**
Eddie was the bell clerk and caretaker of the group of bungalows. He was an affable Kanaka Maoli, as broad as he was tall, with thick black hair and a seemingly inexhaustible store of tacky Hawaiian shirts. He was weeding the flowerbeds when we got back in. “Hey, Mister S,” he said, wiping the sweat from his face and making himself filthy in the process. His eyes fell upon my son’s shell and he broke into a huge smile. “Hey there, little man, looks like you brought a good one home!”
My son proudly handed the shell over to Eddie, who whistled. “That’s a beauty right there, yes sir. You don’t see a shell that nice most of the time, unless you buy it. You could sell that for twenty bucks right now down at the souvenir store.”
“I’m not selling it,” my son said. “I’m going to keep it by my bed and listen to the waves.”
“A-OK!” said Eddie. He held the shell up to his ear and listened for a long time. Then he handed it back to my son. “Mahalo, nui loa, much obliged my friend,” he said. “Did you let your Dad have a listen?”
“He didn’t want to,” my son said sadly.
“Oh, hey mister,” said Eddie, scolding me jokingly. “You can’t leave the islands until you’ve heard the ocean in a seashell. It’s part of the island life. That’s the kind of thing makes living on Hawaii worthwhile.” Eddie always seemed blissed out on his own existence, which I supposed would actually be a pretty good way to go through life.
“I dunno, I feel like a tourist doing that sort of stuff,” I said.
“Well then, do it inside where you can’t be embarrassed by people seeing you!” Eddie suggested.
“Yeah, maybe,” I replied. I have a stubborn streak, and I don’t like to feel pushed into doing anything, even trivial things.
“Well, I don’t know what you guys have planned for the rest of the day,” Eddie said, turning serious, “but I hope it includes doing stuff under a roof. It is going to RAIN, big-time downpour. I made some sandwiches and lemonade and stuff and put it in your kitchenette. You better plan on being in there soon, because you are gonna see the sky OPEN UP!”
“Thanks, Eddie,” I said, stepping up to the front door of the bungalow. “Sandwiches and lemonade sounds really good right now.”
“A-OK!” Eddie said, and got back to his gardening.
**
Eddie was right, because it started raining just after we ate lunch. Fat drops splatted on the windows such that you couldn’t actually see much of anything through them. The sound of rain drumming on the roof was hypnotic; I decided to sit down and do the crossword. My son curled up on his bed with his new shell pressed to his ear and dozed off.
Soon it was dark, and I couldn’t tell if it was dark because of the time or because it was raining so hard. I didn’t care. I checked on my son to see he was still snoozing, then had two beers in quick succession. There is something about ice cold beer on a rainy day that screams ‘VACATION’ to me. I sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. There was a rerun of a football game on. I started to watch it. The beers must have caught up with me; with no pressing responsibilities and no immediate personal needs, I dropped off.
I was startled awake by feeling something clammy on my face. I batted it away with a hand and sat up. My son was standing next to the couch. The shell had fallen down to the carpet.
“You almost broke it!” my son whined, stooping to pick up his shell.
“I was sleeping,” I murmured, stretching. “Why’d you put that smelly thing on me anyway?”
“I wanted you to hear it,” my son said insistently. “You won’t listen to my shell at all.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to put it on my ear while I’m sleeping. I just don’t want to listen to it.”
“It’s the sea! It sounds like the sea in there, and you don’t even like it!” My son was crying.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll listen to your shell, all right? Don’t worry.” I picked up the shell and went into the kitchenette.
I filled a pot full of water and a little bit of salt, put the lid on it, and put it on the burner. My son frowned.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m going to clean the shell,” I said. “Right now it’s kind of stinky. It smells like the sea. For all we know there are bits of dead mollusk inside there right now. I’m going to get it all cleaned up and nice smelling, and then we’ll listen to it together.”
My son looked at the pot. “You’re going to clean it…by boiling it?” he asked.
“That’s the right way to clean shells,” I said.
He shook his head slowly side to side. “No,” he said, “you can’t boil my shell.”
“Why not?” I asked, searching through the drawers for some tongs.
“YOU CAN’T BOIL MY SHELL.” My son’s fists were balled and he glared at me. He was biting his lip. There was blood. I stopped what I was doing and crouched down in front of my son.
“Hey,” I said. “Easy there. Easy. Please don’t be upset. What’s the matter?”
My son shook his head back and forth. A little snot was coming out of his nose. “I don’t want for you to boil it,” he said. “It would be bad.”
“Then we won’t boil it,” I said soothingly. “Let me turn the heat off, and….”
I almost jumped out of my skin. There was something on the kitchen window. It was about as big as my foot, a pale peach color, and slowly moving diagonally upwards. I realized it was on the outside of the window, leaving a trail of some kind of goo behind it that the rain was trying to wash away. I stepped up close to the window and viewed it from below. It was like a giant snail of some kind … no. It was whatever creature had made the shell my son had found, but it was like a landlubber snail instead of a sea mollusk, with a slimy foot propelling that beautiful shell along. In the very center of the foot was something like a tongue that squirmed against the glass.
The lightning flashed, and then Eddie was standing on the other side of the kitchen. He was wearing a yellow poncho over his Hawaiian shirt, and rain was streaming off of it. He wasn’t smiling.
“You shoulda just listened to the shell, man,” he said.
“Eddie?” I said. There were two more Kanaka Maoli behind him.
“Now don’t make this too hard on us, Mister S,” Eddie pleaded, coming forward.
I threw the hot water at him, but then my son grabbed one of my ankles. Before I could shake him loose the other two fellows were on me. They smelled like sandalwood soap and suntan lotion. They had me around my arms and were throwing me to the floor. I kicked out, and I heard the sickening sound of my son crying out in pain. Then Eddie’s weight was pinning me and his voice was just behind my head.
“C’mon now,” he said, lightning flashing again. “It’s only the sea.” He pressed something cold to my head.
Something entered my ear.
**
We sat out on the beach in recumbent chairs, my son and I. My son had a fat lip. The rain had departed and it was sunny again. We lay on top of our towels, watching the surf coming in. Each of us had a shell, and we listened to the musical sounds of the rolling ocean waves.
I turned to my son. “I really am sorry about kicking you like that,” I told him.
He smiled. “I know,” he said. “It’s okay.”
It was a beautiful day in Hawaii. We had nothing we needed to do, nowhere we needed to be. Sadly, though, in a few days we would need to get back on our plane, go back to our home on the mainland, and resume our ordinary lives. Oh, there would be a few changes. There might be some special errands we would have to run. We might need to go places, say things; perhaps make a few deliveries. And there was the special package we were having shipped home, too. It was a box full of souvenirs – shells, mostly – that we would be disposing of when we got home. I didn’t know what we would be doing with it, exactly, but I didn’t care. The shells would tell us.
It was liberating to think that no matter where we went, we would be bringing the relaxed state of mind of the islands with us. Regardless of the troubles that surely lay ahead of us, regardless of the trying times that were to come, we knew we could always lie back and put a shell to our ears.
Then we would hear the sound of the sea, and everything would be A-OK.
