Making Peace with the Ocean

Over hot cups of tea, my friends and I sit in a quiet circle late into the night. The clock reads ten past three, and at 21 years of age, I am still fearful it is past my bedtime. It is a swift realisation and often buried quickly under the loud reminder of my independence. But still there. I am still my mother’s daughter.

It is a reminder that strikes at the oddest hours, like when I am squeezing tomatoes or slapping watermelons in a grocery store in Chinatown. Truth be told, I am never sure how to distinguish a good fruit from a bad one, but I hold and bounce them just like she does. A series of actions I have observed keenly and mastered skillfully over the years. I replicate it—I am just like my mother. 

On this side of Lake Ontario, the realisation is comforting. But tucked across the Naini Lake when I sat on the floor next to my mother while she got dressed for the day, it unnerved me. Cream, Powder, Sindoor, Lip Liner, Lipstick, Kajal. We would stare into the same mirror, but my eyes would be glued on her. I could never imagine myself being a woman. Girls are allowed to scream and run and cling to their papa’s legs. Girls are allowed to be their mother’s daughters all the time. Protected by Naini Lake, I was a girl. 

It was near the Eastern Gulf of Thailand where those allowances started slowly being taken from me. It was a feeling before it was an implementation. With ‘well-meaning’ nods to ‘talk softly,’ everyone kept forcing womanhood on me. ‘Your body is changing,’ ‘you’re becoming a woman,’ ‘you need to be more aware of how you move, Subhi,’ they whispered to me, like it was meant to be a secret. So, in my overworn PE shorts and my boxy volunteer T-shirts, I rejected their offers. They could keep their womanly secrets and I would keep my girlhood. 

In my teenage bedroom, my study table faced the Pattaya Beach. My mother thought it would be a peaceful scene for me while studying; the rhythm of the waves would keep me calm. I pulled the curtains shut. I found the waves too loud, the tides too high, the continuous motion intrusive. The ocean knew how resentful I was about every change and kept taunting me on a cycle. I am a shit swimmer because of this grudge. 

My mother loves the ocean. She took long walks on Pattaya Beach and took a photo of the sunset everyday. I found her ridiculous. She threw themed parties for her friends, cooking and eating together almost every weekend. They would stay on phone calls planning outfits before every party for hours on end. It made me nauseous. I hated wearing lipstick and my kajal would smear each time. My attempts to look like my mother were met with crushing failures each time, so I stopped trying. How is someone supposed to be a woman if they cannot look like one?

On this side of Lake Ontario, I am only afforded time with my grandmother in 12-inch frames on WhatsApp calls. Maybe it is the pixelated video fighting against poor internet connection, or just a memory covered in nostalgia, but she concludes almost every call in soft Maithili, “just like her mother.” It is whispered like it is sacred. I am a woman because I feel like my ma. I share her features physically now—same smile, same soft jaw and sharp eyebrows. But the thing that assures me in my womanhood the most is not that I can finally face myself in the mirror when we are getting ready; it is that we are both just girls. I relish the fact that I have her temper and how the same sharp eyebrows screw together in anger. We both tear up every time we laugh. I am a woman because I, like my ma, am desperately holding onto my girlhood.