CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I have been to the Conclave–a gathering of the greatest
minds on earth–and none of those minds were of man. None of
those who were present has ever walked the shores of the waters of
life, nor have any of them ever envied those who do.
I have been with Harmony. I have argued my case before a
tribunal so bizarre, so beautiful, that is beyond simple description.
The night is not bright, but well-lit nonetheless, in this early
northern fall. Cotton-gauze clouds filter the half-moon light as I
walk my silent walk.
Mercury waves slip and slide like long, twisty snakes, hissing
up and down the pebbled shore. The air, cool and crisp, bites at
my cheeks and explodes into silver vapor streamers as I exhale my
breath long-held. This is Alaska September; fall in a place of early
hard winter.
I look back to where the gravely shore refuses to mark my
passing with lingering boot prints. It is as if I were placed where I
am coming from–nowhere–having nowhere to go.
I am now of the Song of the Sea, for I have heard it sung.
I am the one in billions of humankind who must try to teach the
others to sing. Should I fail to do so, man will earn the punishment
he has so freely passed on to others . . . extinction. Like my boot
prints, we will leave no trace on the jagged edge of the dryside near
the waters of life.
I am the wrong with ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD.
I am sandwalker, called Sharing by the brethren of the song who
taught me to listen.
Sharing – a name given to me late in life by those creatures I
have come to love.
Sharing – an odd name for one who really hasn’t shared at
all. Only now have I begun to learn that life is a precious gift. It
requires, even demands, that lives be spent giving back the gift to
ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD,
Shamed am I–knowing now what I know–penitent for the
wrongs that my fellow creatures and I have committed against the sea.
I am sandwalker . . . the creatures given so much in the beginning.
I am sandwalker . . . the takers of all that can be taken. From
birth, we are obsessed with our own mortality; we claw at life de-
manding that it give up the secret to eternal youth.
We think ourselves the grandest of creatures. Now it seems
that we were grand only in our conceit of dominion of all that we felt
we commanded. I am one with these creatures that stagger on the
shore, seeking immortality. But I now am also one with the Song of
the Sea.
The Song of the Sea, now listened to and understood, boils
in my blood. Life takes on new passions with which I am now filled.
I am racked with envy of those who live in the sea, for I do not, and
cannot, live there, though I crave to do so. I am sandwalker, and to
be sandwalker is to covet all that you are not.
The Song of the Sea has few requirements, but one dictate
is that the singer, the recorder of the history of a pod, must always
identify his or her position in the song. I have been called to record
the song for my pod, for the sandwalker . . . for mankind.
Therefore, as the song requires, as the song dictates . . . I
begin at my beginning.
I am called Sharon . . . born in the turbulent tides that
flow without water on the dryside.
My story begins . . .
I was born, but, unlike the brethren of the song, I don’t
remember. The most glorious expression of life is birth. I envy my
friends who live and sing in the sea for they remember this precise
moment and before. Yet we, of all the creatures who live upon the
earth, cannot remember the moment of our own beginning. We try.
We want to remember, but all bits of this wondrous event seem to
be scrubbed clean from our slate of memory, replaced by the initial
feeble scratching of our profound desire to survive.
My first memories of life are of muted rainbows that wrapped
the world in sunset and dawn and changed blink by blink. I vaguely
remember lying in my crib, gazing through the bars to watch a riot of
colors and subtle movements that fought for my strictest attention.
I remember waking to the gentle touch of a breeze through
an open window and the subtle warmth of a sunlight ribbon lancing
bright and bold. I remember the joy and reflections of laughter in
my parents’ eyes at my first hesitant steps. I remember their pain as
they looked on my world of silent still, for I was born deaf.
What an odd word . . . deaf. A brief word, a bleak word creat-
ed by those who can hear; a word that to the deaf community signi-
fies nothing. I do not envy sound. I do not cry or lament my lack.
For having never experienced sound, how would I covet it? I have
been pitied by nearly all I have met for my seeming lack of ability.
But nature compensates, and my compensation was to feel emo-
tion–to truly know the meaning of empathy. I have gone through
life sensing without hearing all the music and the riot of sounds
around me. I prefer my silence to the seemingly cheap carnival of
sounds that hearing folk jostle to experience.
I was taken to the best doctors in the world. Each, upon
examining me, found the same thing. Where most are born with
a complete inner ear, I, instead, possessed an odd growth of bone
that blocked all sound. I could feel vibration, but there was nothing
to amplify the tonal qualities. They remained simple vibrations–no
sound. My parents tried and tried but finally resigned themselves to
that which I had never questioned –Their child was deaf.
At an early age, my parents compensated for my lack by
teaching me to sign–to speak the magic language of hand and body.
I learned also how to read books much earlier than a so-called nor-
mal child and was mesmerized by the magic of words. Still and all,
signing is more expressive, and to that end–although I can read lips
and feel the vibrations of sound–I would much rather paint my words
on the wind than make the guttural utterances of normal folk.
When I was four and very full of my own directions, my par-
ents took me to the ocean. Oh, what a delight! Breezes, edged
lightly with sharp, scented salts, abraded my face and made me feel
alive. Churning waters rolled powerfully to the shore in great arms,
then fists, then fingers outstretched, reaching for all and anything
that came near. I wanted to go. I was compelled to walk as deep
into the water as I could and then to swim farther still. The sea
made me laugh. The sea made me cry. At first sight, I was obsessed
with a longing to be a part of this vastness.
And so, in my childlike simplicity of thought, action and deed
became one, and I simply sank into the sea. The water boiled be-
fore my eyes, and I could not truly see anything but bits of swirling
sand. There was a power in the sea that I could not hear, but rather
felt. I was shocked, for this was the first time that I truly felt sound.
I felt the sea roaring, and that word took on new meaning. I felt the
sea pound at the land, as in a battle fought from great distances.
My journey was short lived. My father dashed into the water to save
his daughter from drowning in her own delight.
He yanked me, most unceremoniously, from the salty water.
Like some prize dangling from his arms, he took me from my sea.
As we splashed back to the beach, he clutched me to his chest. I
could feel his heart pounding, an engine still fueled with the adren-
aline of fear. I could not explain to either of my parents what I felt
that day. The beauty and the power of the sea was mine to possess-
-and mine alone. Greedily, I looked upon my domain–my sea. For
the first time, I felt clean . . . absolutely clean and washed over. I
didn’t want to leave, and I remember that I threw a fit as we drove
away from the immediate shore. They laughed at first, and then
became distressed by my newfound obsession.
Pouting, my lower lip extended in defiance, I sullenly rode
with them to our other holiday adventures, paled now by compar-
ison to the sea. Still later in the day, there came a surprise that
almost superseded the grandeur of the sea. My parents took me to
a place where the ocean fishes were kept in great windowed tanks
filled with volumes of water. Here, I could easily view the majesty
of life beneath the sea. As a child, I could almost sense what it was
like to live beneath the waters.
My mother, father, and I went hand-in-hand from win-
dow-to-window, gazing at this sparkling world. Octopus, parrot fish,
cod, and shark all swam together in a mighty synergism. One-by-
one or in milling swarms, these creatures of the sea swam by my
window, occasionally stopping to look at me through the glass, into
my world as I looked into theirs. Oh, the delight, the joy!
The tantrum I threw at being torn from the sea was nothing
to the one I threw when my parents tried to take me from my win-
dow. My world being soundless, I felt, nonetheless, the discomfort
of the other aquarium visitors as I vented my frustration at leaving
my new-found friends, the fishes. Out of embarrassment, my mother
finally relented and allowed me to stand alone for a few more mo-
ments at what was now clearly my window. My parents moved away,
all the while keeping a cautious eye on their now wayward daughter
who had become a bit infatuated by all. Sometimes being deaf lent
an aura of mystery to an otherwise typical child and softened some
punishments to pity.
I stood there, looking through the glazed glass into a world
as silent as mine. The minions continued to swim in parade, a
revue as it were, and I would have watched forever, had it not been
for a magical marshmallow monster. I had been peering into the
gloom, my hands cupped around my eyes, my nose pressed against
the glass. I was shocked beyond words as a creature made of white
bubble gum, with black gumdrop eyes popped up from below the
window. This monster seemed to rise from the bottom of the tank
as I was looking up. One moment, it wasn’t there, and the next, it
was. I screamed but continued to watch in rapt fascination.
When I could take no more, I ducked down below the glass
and, after catching my breath, gripped the sweating metal brace
beam and peeked back into the tank. The monster was gone. I
stood, shaken by the surprise of it all, when up popped the monster
again. Down I ducked; and, as I ducked, I noticed that the monster
did the same.
It is miraculous how quickly a child can convert from fear
to fascination and on to delight, and I was no exception. I popped
up–the monster popped up. I dropped down–the monster disap-
peared. I thought to catch this creature in the act. I slowly peeped
one eye above the frame to watch its monstrous head rise into view.
As slowly as I rose, so rose the monster until I was looking into the
heart of his very merry eye. Captured whole by this delight of the
deep, I looked into his soul and found so much depth of heart and
compassion that I cried for want of never leaving.
In a burst of bubbles, this most unlikely monster backed off
so I could see all of him. He was nearly fifteen feet long and pearly
white from the tip of his bubbled head to the end of his tail. He ca-
vorted for me there, this priceless crown prince of the teasing sea.
I could feel my laughter welling in bursts of giggles as I watched
my new-found friend twist and turn, swimming sideways and upside
down, all for my delight. Without my notice, my parents had joined
me and watched in fascination. Father signed that this delightful
creature was whale and, letter-by-letter, spelled out the word Beluga:
Beluga whale–a perfect name for my marshmallow monster.
I was captured that day, as only a four-year-old can be, and
I pledged myself for all time to the sea. Many, many years later at
my college graduation, I stood on the dais and signed the word . .
. Beluga. Only my parents understood the reference to a very funny
whale that, for whatever reason, sought to make a little girl laugh.