The Sea Reminds Me of the Ebb and Flow of Life’s Emotions
Bittersweet memories of holidays at the ocean
In an essay published on 24 December last year, I expressed my desire to “organize a trip to the coast for my adorable, yet now fragile husband before it’s too late.”
It never happened as he passed away two months later on 24 January 2024.
It’s taken me almost a week to settle down and write about my love for the sea because every time I tried, I cried.
Most of my holidays and adventures at the seaside include my soulmate, as we’d been together for 39 years — more than half my lifetime. We always headed to the sea for our getaway from inland Johannesburg.
To ease my way into sharing those memories, I shall begin with my holidays on the coast when I was a child in England.
Perhaps by then, my heart will calm the wild emotions whirling in my head with gentle waves of joy and loving remembrance.
My paternal grandparents had retired to Saunton, a village two miles from Braunton, on the North Devonshire coast, probably before I was born.
My dad, brother and I, together with our three cousins and aunt, would descend on Willoways House for a week or two during the August holidays, to enjoy the sand and sea a short walk away.
My grandparents were the old-fashioned sort who disapproved of children running amok in the house, or speaking at the dinner table. My grandad was formerly a headmaster, thus very strict!
However, on the beach, we were free to play and paddle in the waves, build sandcastles and shout and laugh, as kids do, without being shushed.
I remember dad owned a Brownie camera, but few photographs survive from so long ago.
Another time I remember is my dad surprising my brother and me with a trip to the seaside. We were so excited; packed our buckets and spades, swimming costumes and towels for the drive down to Brighton.
At Saunton, my brother and I loved building sandcastles with a moat; we made up stories of knights and damsels in distress as the tide rose and washed the castles away; or collecting seashells along the shore.
We looked forward to doing the same at Brighton, only to discover it was a pebble beach. What also maddened me, and this I DO remember, was the pebbles hurt my feet, so I put my Clarks sandals back on.
We befriended another young boy on the beach and enjoyed ourselves. I decided never to go there again.
We arrived in South Africa in 1958 when I turned eight.
The only seaside holiday I had here until my adult years was at the invitation of a school friend’s family, when we drove down to Scottburgh on the Kwa-Zulu Natal south coast for two weeks.
We had a wonderful time playing on the beach and surfing the waves every day. I only learned to swim in South Africa, so could safely plunge into the Indian Ocean.
Fast forward to my adult years.
During my first marriage, we never went on holiday, except once to eSwatini, and a couple times to visit his mother in Cape Town, but we only visited the beach a few times. Nothing worth mentioning. I divorced him.
This is the part where I engage my heart, because my most memorable holidays at the sea began when I met my soulmate.
Our first adventure was unplanned. This was my first December leave from my new corporate job, which included a company car. We drove down to the Eastern Cape, equipped with two sleeping bags and a pup tent we’d hired, some cooking gear and utensils — and food!
We intended to pitch a tent at a camping ground in East London. The place was too noisy and crowded; we drove on to see where the road led us.
We hit a dirt track and traveled on toward the coast. However, we arrived at a closed entrance to a nature reserve. The guard gave us directions on how to reach the coast, as the reserve was closed to visitors.
After much rocky riding through potholes and stony roads, in an Opel 1300 hatchback which was not designed for such a surface, we finally reached the beach after passing a small trading store two kilometres inland.
What a wild paradise.!
No hotels, no electricity, no running water, no people other than us. Before off-loading the car, we headed back to the store to buy a large plastic container filled with drinking water, then returned and pitched the tiny tent on top of a small dune.
We settled in for our first night and slept like babies.
The next morning, I woke to a sound I couldn’t decipher. I peeked out of the tent and spotted a couple of Nguni cattle munching on the grass. We had a variety of morning visitors over the next five days we stayed there — sheep and goats.
We met the children from the local village who were fascinated to see these abelungu (plural for umlungu meaning white person in isiXhosa or isiZulu) camping on the beach away from civilization.
They showed us the location of a freshwater pool which formed part of a river we never identified. Here we bathed and washed off the salt from our daily walks on the beach and dipping in the sea. A couple of the kids stood guard on a small hillock above the pool, so we weren’t disturbed by strangers — animal or human.
I suffered sunburn in places I shall not describe here, as we often walked nude on the beach.
That first escapade stands out as the best adventure we enjoyed together, though not the last.
For our future camping holidays at the coast, we invested in a two-room tent, camp beds and all the gear we needed, without going overboard. But we stayed at official campsites, with access to electricity, and ablution blocks with showers and toilets.
We also planned our holidays during school terms so the roads were less busy, and places less crowded.
Over the following few years, we stayed at a caravan/campsite at Brenton-on-Lake, a five-minute drive from Knysna on the Garden Route. It gave us a base to visit and walk in the Knysna Forest and see the historical sites in the area, but was also a short drive in the other direction to the small beach at Brenton-on-Sea.
The Atlantic waters are icy cold — so we’d only walk into the shallows to splash and cool off, then back to sunning ourselves and reading, or collecting shells.
We were never as spontaneous as that first time, though I recall our trek to Sodwana Bay in a car and not a 4X4 caused raised eyebrows when we arrived. Yes, we got stuck in soft sand twice en route, but dug the wheels out and carried on.
That was our last camping trip.
(Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos from these first three seaside holidays together.)
With advancing age, for our later holidays, we booked self-catering accommodation. No way would we stay in hotels.
Our next holiday to the coast was at Bazley Beach, a small enclave 26 kilometres of Scottburgh, the town where I’d spent my first coastal holiday in South Africa decades before. The resort had a small store for basic provisions such as bread and milk, so on our second day, we drove through to Scottburgh to stock up on groceries.
We stopped at the Scottburgh beach while there. It was nothing like I remembered, and you had to pay to enter, hire umbrellas and deckchairs. How sad!
In 2011, we spent a wonderful ten days at St. Lucia to visit the La Lucia wetlands on a boat tour where we spotted hippos, a crocodile and a variety of bird life.
Apart from that day, we spent much of our time walking on the beach and dipping in the Indian Ocean’s warm waters.
Our final encounter with the seaside was in January 2015 when we shed all our baggage, mental and physical, and took our chances down in Port Elizabeth (renamed Gqeberha in 2021) where my late brother- and sister-in-law ran a guest house, a five-minute walk from the beach at Summerstrand.
We enjoyed our morning walks that first month when we stayed with them. Also fortunate that Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior was docked in the harbor while we were there and were able to tour the ship.
The pressure was on to find our own place and a job. Enough said on that score. I thought I’d easily find one, but the odds aren’t great when you’re over 65. I found employment, but the wages barely covered the rent and food.
We headed back to Johannesburg in August that same year.
That was the last time my soulmate would ever see the sea.
My guilt and regret at not being able to manifest that one last trip fades as I write this. These memories are now on record, so I will never forget them. Neither will the world wide web! They fill my heart with tears of joy and happiness.
The sea reminds me of the ebb and flow of life’s emotions.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you to Sahil Patel for your inspiring prompt Tales from the Tide and for publishing my late response.
I would like to share the story Trisha Faye wrote about trees.
Having lost her mother in 2020 and her better half last year, she gave me the idea of what to do with my soulmate’s ashes — a bio-urn to grow a tree from them. But I’ll wait and let our ashes grow into two adjacent trees — side by side forever.
Another story that caught my attention was by Suma Narayan who loves the sea despite not being able to swim. Her photography is magical!