MERMAID'S TEARS
Creative Nonfiction
by
Julie Sellers
by
Julie Sellers
I walked slowly along the ruddy beach at Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, the sea rolling and sighing ceaselessly beside me, Green Gables just a skip away. The trip that had taken me there had been over a year in the making, a beacon that guided me through a series of challenges in my own life. In that time, my mother had passed, I had weathered my own illness, and my childhood home had burned. I often felt adrift during that brutal stretch, and the only true north I found was in the beloved pages of my favorite childhood novel and my determination for this trip to its setting. Now, I walked slowly along the beach, savoring each step under the afternoon sun, tasting the salt in the air, breathing in the unmistakable scent of the sea, and searching among the shells and driftwood for mermaid’s tears.
The legend of the mermaid who calmed the seas to save her beloved’s life and was banished to the bottom of the ocean as a result had instantly sparked my imagination, giving me a thrill worthy of Anne. The fanciful name for sea glass piqued my interest, for it succinctly captured the spirit of the shards of glass and pottery thrown to the waves and tossed about as in some giant tumbler. More than trash and brokenness, they could only be pain transformed into beauty by the passage of time. Shards sharp and jagged tumbled across the miles, their rough edges eventually worn smooth by the waves and sand; the elements and hours turned clear colors opaque, and the waves deposited these sea-worn treasures on the shore as they exhaled.
The quietness of the afternoon, punctuated only by the sound of the waves, the whisper of the breeze, and an occasional distant call of a gull, lent itself to reflection. I thought back across the years and how this island had been so influential in shaping who I am. I had visited Prince Edward Island in dreams nourished by Anne of Green Gables long before I ever set foot on its iconic red soil. As a girl, I identified keenly with Anne, and I had walked many a red road and along many a shoreline with her and L.M. Montgomery’s other characters while still safely tucked away in the family farmhouse in Kansas. I felt a sense of homecoming when I first traveled to the island with my husband at his suggestion for our honeymoon. Since then, twelve years had passed, and the last two had refined and redefined me with their challenges.
When I saw the call for proposals for the conference in Prince Edward Island, I made it my goal, something to strive for after such a period of merely holding on. Somehow, in a way I couldn’t quite put into words, I intuited that returning to those cherished books and to the Island itself might reconnect me in some small way with who I had been, with the dreams of adolescence, the hope of new beginnings. I set my sights on that objective, and even that small step seemed to bring me back to myself. I remembered other dreams and ambitions envisioned long ago as I sat against my low, bedroom window with Anne propped on my knees. Something dormant in me began to reach for the sun, stretching out cautious tendrils and sinking roots deeper into the soil with each objective met: proposal accepted, reservations made, presentation delivered.
Now, here I was, tracing a path back through time as I moved slowly forward across the rosy sand. I walked the shore in search of mermaid’s tears with intermittent pauses to look out to sea and imagine the ships that had sailed there, the lives who had known that space, those who had last touched the colorful pieces of the past before throwing them to the waves. Something about the dream-like rhythm of the afternoon was cathartic. Each step took me back across all that the last two years had brought into my own life, memories still sharp to the touch. Each breath filled me again with the hope and optimism of a certain redheaded orphan. As I gazed out to sea, the sun and wind stung my eyes and salty tears ran down my face. Peace pulsed through me, keeping time with the waves’ eternal ebb and flow. I sensed more than I knew that time would smooth these jagged edges, turning them slowly yet inexorably until they washed ashore as mermaid’s tears.
The legend of the mermaid who calmed the seas to save her beloved’s life and was banished to the bottom of the ocean as a result had instantly sparked my imagination, giving me a thrill worthy of Anne. The fanciful name for sea glass piqued my interest, for it succinctly captured the spirit of the shards of glass and pottery thrown to the waves and tossed about as in some giant tumbler. More than trash and brokenness, they could only be pain transformed into beauty by the passage of time. Shards sharp and jagged tumbled across the miles, their rough edges eventually worn smooth by the waves and sand; the elements and hours turned clear colors opaque, and the waves deposited these sea-worn treasures on the shore as they exhaled.
The quietness of the afternoon, punctuated only by the sound of the waves, the whisper of the breeze, and an occasional distant call of a gull, lent itself to reflection. I thought back across the years and how this island had been so influential in shaping who I am. I had visited Prince Edward Island in dreams nourished by Anne of Green Gables long before I ever set foot on its iconic red soil. As a girl, I identified keenly with Anne, and I had walked many a red road and along many a shoreline with her and L.M. Montgomery’s other characters while still safely tucked away in the family farmhouse in Kansas. I felt a sense of homecoming when I first traveled to the island with my husband at his suggestion for our honeymoon. Since then, twelve years had passed, and the last two had refined and redefined me with their challenges.
When I saw the call for proposals for the conference in Prince Edward Island, I made it my goal, something to strive for after such a period of merely holding on. Somehow, in a way I couldn’t quite put into words, I intuited that returning to those cherished books and to the Island itself might reconnect me in some small way with who I had been, with the dreams of adolescence, the hope of new beginnings. I set my sights on that objective, and even that small step seemed to bring me back to myself. I remembered other dreams and ambitions envisioned long ago as I sat against my low, bedroom window with Anne propped on my knees. Something dormant in me began to reach for the sun, stretching out cautious tendrils and sinking roots deeper into the soil with each objective met: proposal accepted, reservations made, presentation delivered.
Now, here I was, tracing a path back through time as I moved slowly forward across the rosy sand. I walked the shore in search of mermaid’s tears with intermittent pauses to look out to sea and imagine the ships that had sailed there, the lives who had known that space, those who had last touched the colorful pieces of the past before throwing them to the waves. Something about the dream-like rhythm of the afternoon was cathartic. Each step took me back across all that the last two years had brought into my own life, memories still sharp to the touch. Each breath filled me again with the hope and optimism of a certain redheaded orphan. As I gazed out to sea, the sun and wind stung my eyes and salty tears ran down my face. Peace pulsed through me, keeping time with the waves’ eternal ebb and flow. I sensed more than I knew that time would smooth these jagged edges, turning them slowly yet inexorably until they washed ashore as mermaid’s tears.
Julie A. Sellers is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, and she is also a Federally Certified Court Interpreter (English/Spanish). A native of Kansas, Julie has travelled extensively in Latin America and Spain. She has twice been the overall prose winner of the Kansas Voices Contest (2017, 2019). She has published in Wanderlust, The Write Launch, Kansas Time + Place, and Heartland!. Julie's third academic book, The Modern Bachateros: 27 Interviews (McFarland, 2017), received the Kansas Authors Club 2018 It Looks Like A Million Book Award.
Author's statement: Anne of Green Gables was as much of a home to me as Green Gables was to Anne Shirley. That fictional world was a space where I, a bookish, imaginative girl with dreams of being a writer, fit in perfectly. My relationship and understanding of Anne has constantly evolved over the years, and she remains beside me through each stage of life, like a true bosom friend.
Julie A. Sellers is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, and she is also a Federally Certified Court Interpreter (English/Spanish). A native of Kansas, Julie has travelled extensively in Latin America and Spain. She has twice been the overall prose winner of the Kansas Voices Contest (2017, 2019). She has published in Wanderlust, The Write Launch, Kansas Time + Place, and Heartland!. Julie's third academic book, The Modern Bachateros: 27 Interviews (McFarland, 2017), received the Kansas Authors Club 2018 It Looks Like A Million Book Award.
Author's statement: Anne of Green Gables was as much of a home to me as Green Gables was to Anne Shirley. That fictional world was a space where I, a bookish, imaginative girl with dreams of being a writer, fit in perfectly. My relationship and understanding of Anne has constantly evolved over the years, and she remains beside me through each stage of life, like a true bosom friend.