Dervla Writes

"You’ll spoil your dress!”  The first time I saw the ocean I wasn’t allowed to go near it. My parents had dressed me up for the ferry and I was to go across the sea to meet my great uncle. He wouldn’t have wanted a girl covered in sand, and drenched in salt water, although after living there for three years I don’t think he would have cared.  I was never one for sitting down for long periods. My childhood was filled with daydreams of wings, of me flying through the air. I thought one day I would sprout feathers and rise. But that dream faded with age, until I saw the sea and wondered what it would feel like to be engulfed in it.  Since then I’ve been back and forth on the ferry, each time staring at the waves, the sand, even in the winter there was something so different about it. It was peaceful chaos, the quiet of the beach and the unpredictability of the waves. Each time my dress was too fancy to ruin or my hair too styled to risk messing up. I was never allowe...