My Mother Blessed Me With Her Name

In my culture, names are of the utmost importance. Names are a blessing, a gift, a guide for your child to to navigate life. My mother, pregnant with me, went to a fortune teller to understand my future. And from the future he told her, she found a name that would bless me with gifts that she found I would lack.

I cannot say whether it has worked or not, whether I ever truly needed some of the blessings or whether the other blessings will temper my worst instincts. But what I can say is that my mother gave me another name blessing--her own.

She grew up in a time before people commonly had English names and she chose one for herself. The name she chose for herself was Marina. And with that name, she blessed me with a love for the sea.

It is not unusual that I should have an affinity for the sea. I come from an island, where mountain and sea meet. And even if my mother had not named herself after the sea, I still have plenty of reasons to be drawn to the sea. I was born in the midst of a deadly typhoon, a storm where the sea meets land. That typhoon wrecked our home, our island and only subsided when I neared birth. But that could've made me a harbringer of chaos, not a lover of the sea.

No, I'm almost certain that my love of the sea was given to me by my mother, who herself is deathly terrified of it. She cannot swim but she made sure I could. She found me a swimming coach that threw me in the deep end of the swimming pool and waited for me to swim back. Since then, I have never been the fastest swimmer but I have always had the tenacity to outlast whatever horrors the terrible sea decides to throw at me.

And I have lived through experiences that should drive my love of the sea away. I've trembled on a capsised boat as I was pelted with ice rain and watched as my boat repeatedly tried to throw itself onto the jagged rocks surrounding an island despite my best navigation away from the rocks. Any sailor worth her salt would have paused, perhaps given up an offering or two to pray for her safety. If she valued her life, she may have stayed away from the sea or learnt to fear the sea. But I find that I cannot. To me, the sea is home.

That is perhaps, the greatest gift that my mother could have given me. She has imparted many other lessons on me, but none that stick to me like water sodden clothing. Maybe some part of her knew decades before I was born that I would always be a lost, wandering soul and that I would always need a reminder of home. And so she gave me a gift that would remind me of her, of home, always.

I was born of the sea. The greatest lessons I have learnt I learnt from my mother, the sea. I have learnt that sometimes, you can do everything right and everything in your power and it will not be enough. I have learnt that this does not mean you give up, even if your skill alone will never stand up against the raw power of nature. Because when you are given an opportunity, you will need the skill to navigate you through the rocks of opportunity. And that the sea is vast, but it is not endless.

I was born of the sea, and to it I must always return.

Hello, and welcome to my profile that is rift with sea introspection. Although I think they are all worth a read, may I suggest Daughter of the Sea?