My mother is a selkie of the sea. She is at home in the icy waves, deftly playing, hunting, and skirting fishermen’s nets. She is wild: not quite human, and not quite seal.

Occasionally, she reaches the shore, ready to sunbathe or dance. She peels off her seal skin, her dark hair cascading across fair skin and eyes black as the depths. To see her is to see another world. To see her is to fall in love with her strange beauty, and many do. For centuries, selkies have unwittingly stolen the hearts of fishermen who in turn take their seal skins and freedom, trapping their loves on land. The selkie becomes a wife and a mother, yet she dreams of the cold waves. She is a woman torn in two. 

My stepfather, a hardworking man, gave my mother a home and a family. She did her best to live by the ways of motherhood and of tame women, but soon a pattern emerged. Some years, she’d rail against the confines of suburbia, marriage, and motherhood. She’d disappear into her darkness and become wild, searching, searching, searching for something that could take her far, far away. Could she find the sea at the bottom of a bottle? Could she drown herself in a pill? As her children, we could also hear the distant call.

And still we grew, and still we needed her. 

Then, she’d get better. She’d find happiness in us, and in our home. She’d be so grateful to have returned from her long voyage. So, we’d forgive. We’d forget. 

But her wildness returns like the tide. She upends her life, craving a way out. We are not enough, but we have kept her here this long. Will she ever find her lost skin and truly escape?

There have been hushed hospitalizations and painful secrets, but as I get older, I understand a little more. Year by year, the pull of the wildness in my own veins grows stronger. Yes, yes, I should search for it, drown in it, and leave this life of responsibility behind. 

But this dusty valley, so far from the sea, is my home. This baby forming inside of me is my future and my lighthouse. As my daughter and I grow together, I will still hear the call of the sea from a distance, and pray my mother makes her way to shore again.