The Ocean Breathes
Roughly 20 years ago, my family made a trip back down to hometown number two, Pensacola, FL. Because of my dad’s time in the Navy, we had access to these beach cabins on NAS Pensacola. This meant we were tucked away from the rest of civilization, making this a bit of a private oasis, with just a few other mostly retired military types around. Definitely no party animal type stuff happening here.
There are certain sounds I will always retaliate to this hometown. Definitely any kind of aircraft, but especially jet engines, which I now get an occasional dose of living next to an Air Force base. Lawn mowers, because Southerners will care for their lawns more than their own loved ones sometimes. But, as someone that grew up next to the Gulf of Mexico, the sound of waves crashing on shore.
The ocean will always be a therapeutic sound to me. One of my core memories is eating fried chicken on the beach. Fried chicken doesn’t ever hit the same way for me after that, yet I’m always taken back to that moment whenever I eat KFC. I sought out the Gulf when my father was first hospitalized for a bacterial infection when I went down to visit him once. One thing about the ocean for me is I find it has a way of resetting my breath to a calm rhythm.
With the cabins in mind, they were probably about 100 yards or so from the beach. The air in that part of the country has quite a bit of life in it during the daytime. So, it’s too much to really single out the sound of the ocean over the sound of the wind flowing through the trees, the nearby traffic, or the constant aircraft noise. But, at night it would settle down. It was then, as I laid down on the couch in the living room of the cabin, that I would notice it. The sound of the Gulf, softly beating on the shoreline. Each wave setting my breath as a sort of guided meditation. Reseeding waves would be my inhale, waves coming in would be my exhale. And eventually I would relax enough to go to sleep.
The inside and outside of the cabin.
It’s for this reason I have ocean sounds playing on my bedside speaker at night. It’s part of an automation I have in conjunction with my smart lights. I say “good night” and my lights shut off, and my speaker instantly starts playing. It takes me back to those places and those core memories and gives me something positive to think about as I doze off. Mostly, I’m back in that cabin, looking at the night sky through the high windows in this place, knowing there was no other place I’d rather be at that moment.
