Water grounds me to place.
The closest beach was over two hours away, but my parents would take us almost every weekend. I was fascinated by the range of temperatures and textures the ocean came in. Slick or grainy, balmy or frigid, each sensation felt like home to me.
To tide me over in those moments when the sea seemed distant, I swam in chlorinated pools that stung my eyes and dried my skin. I found myself training for the next time I was back in open water, intentionally holding in air for as long as I could. Breath was a space I held in my chest to dive deep under waves twice my height. My lungs would burn as I came up for air, but that’s how I knew I was okay.
Still, I felt cheated by the universe; why couldn't I have adapted gills? Every gasp for air and every wrinkly finger was a reminder that while a part of Earth, water is otherworldly, and floating in it still leaves you susceptible to time.
My fascination with water came from a lack of it.
When we were younger, my brother and I dug up the backyard in search of treasures. Hiding in the soil, we found a peach pit, a remnant from the grove of giants that stood there long before our house. Drought prevented this seed from becoming a tree. I ran my fingertips along the sharp edges and wrinkles of the pit. It reminded me of my shriveled fingers after hours in the pool. I lowered the seed back into the dry soil from which it came, hoping one day it may live up to its potential.
Officials on the morning news would beg people to stop watering their lawns, threatening to fine them if they didn’t. Their pleas to conserve our water supply were ignored each time. Leaky sprinklers and green grass only confirmed persistent negligence.
The summer heat made people pass out. We were taught to recognize signs of heat stroke as early as age 10 and sought refuge from another 100-degree day in strip malls and grocery stores.
At the same time, we dammed our surface waters to grow enough crops to feed the country and drained our groundwater, despite its imperfections. Where I am from isn’t unique. As a country, we don’t realize that water has limited time on earth. As I wrinkle from too much water, the land shrivels from lack of it.
Water has no ego, it has no say in where it flows, but it carries memories of its past.
We’ve inherited infrastructure and ideology from when we thought we could manipulate nature with no consequence. Aging levees, dams, canals, and pipes cannot withstand the growing intensity of climate change and the storms it brings. Despite the warning signs, our collective hubris leaves us vulnerable to recurring disasters, writing them off as merely bad luck. Yet, we continue to toy with our collective futures by altering rivers, oceans, lakes and wetlands to meet our impossible demands. We imagine that the flow of water is fixed, inevitably moving downstream to those who need it, but the reality is much more sobering.
We have left imprints on the water and the land it flows through. Without adapting to our changing reality, too much water will erode us, and lack of it will leave us dry, until we are all just ghosts.