Rage Is A Cleansing Fire

Lani emerges from her home to survey the damage. The sea is still restless, and the skies are sullen. The shore has been completely reformed—new tide pools gouged by the storm’s angry fingers, sandbars offshore where there had previously been none, the little spit separating her property from the neighboring beach resort completely gone. Mother Ocean likes to redecorate when she is angry. The palm trees in their dance of obeisance dropped their coconuts across the beach, peace offerings to her bombardment (and a handy way to spread coconut palms from island to island, as coconuts float). This is not Lani’s first hurricane, but she still marvels at the beauty and ingenuity of the destruction.

The gulls have yet to return. They fled before the approaching storm, while the sun was still shining on the sand. Their internal warning systems are better than any meteorologist, honed over generations of interactions with the tempest. The lack of bird call or children’s laughter is eerie, but the beach is not silent. The wave sounds and wind rush remain—the slow, menacing roar of an awakened lioness. The water has strained at its boundaries, no longer content to stay on the beach. Streams flow off to places unknown, most likely flooded parking lots and the first floors of homes foolishly not built on stilts. During the storm, the wind egged the water on, encouraging dark thoughts of riotous destruction, and the waves churned in anticipation of clearing the beach of human clutter. This is not the safe, postcard beach that the tourists pay for.

Lani makes her way to the shoreline, fascinated as always by the beauty, power, and fury of Mother Ocean. She gives, and she takes away. She carries us on her breast and casts us away at her feet. She allows us to build at her fingertips but smashes our creations with her fists when we’ve gone too far. Today, she has had enough. Lani stands on the edge of the water, the ocean’s fingers tickling her toes, more foam on these waves than she’s seen in a while. The tourists fled days ago, and the beach is empty, save for Lani and the sea creatures who had the misfortune of being flung ashore in the fury of the storm. The wind, still gusting, whips around Lani now, her T-shirt flapping wildly in the moist air. The storm has weaponized the sand with grain-sized darts stinging her skin and eyes. Even her hair has turned against her, slapping her in the face as the wind gusts.

Pulling her hoodie over her head and walking with her back to the wind, Lani stalks the shore, searching for creatures stranded out of water. With gloved hands and a tender touch, she gently returns star fish and shells with occupants back to the sea where they belong. Scooping them up gently with some sand and water and softly lowering them into the calm deep, beyond the breakers, becomes a meditative practice for her until her area of beach is clear. These poor animals can’t flee, like the gulls or the more popular dolphins when storms approach. When Mother Ocean’s rage reaches its inevitable blinding peak, there are casualties.

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Lani remembers her first hurricane. She was six years old. Her family decided to wait it out, as coastal dwellers often do. Lani remembers the lack of electricity and the bottled water. Her parents were listening to the news on a small transistor radio; it made a crackly sound, and everyone had to be quiet when something important was said. Mostly, Lani recalls playing board games by kerosene lamp light during the height of the storm with her parents and sister, probably, she realizes now, a distraction to reduce the children’s anxiety. They chose Monopoly, a game that often takes forever to play, especially with a six-year-old and a four-year-old.

Lani still idolized her father back then, as most girls do. He was her Daddy, strong, handsome, and the first man she ever loved. Lani wanted to impress him, to make him proud, to be worthy of his love. She was a precocious child and picked up the rules of the game quickly. Her mother and sister got out of the game first, leaving only Lani and her father to play for victory. She was a six-year-old child. He was a 31-year-old man. She just wanted his approval. He wanted to win. He destroyed her and set the dynamic for their relationship for the next ten years.

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Lani looks out at the churning waves. The turbid water is no longer the tourist preferred blue, but a greenish brown from the mixture of silt, sand, and microorganisms stirred up by the storm. The short-timers think Mother Ocean’s anger is ugly, but rage is a cleansing fire, bringing truth and life. The water particles contain nutrients from the depths that feed many of the creatures Lani helped save today. The reworking of the shoreline constantly creates new habitats. The strong, terrible waves prune the corals of dead and broken parts and allow some to send pieces to propagate elsewhere. Violent regeneration is part of nature’s way.

When there are no more creatures to save, Lani begins searching for interesting bits of sea glass, unoccupied or broken shells, driftwood, and other detritus that Mother Ocean has left for her. Lani is an artist, drawing inspiration from destruction, creating beauty from ashes. In her hands, this debris will become a mosaic, collage, mixed media, or sculpture, a treasured item salvaged from churning seas.

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Lani recalls her first taste of rage, when disappointment and heartache turned violently into a storm she couldn’t control. She had known her father wasn’t a nice man since that night when he gloated over drubbing a six-year-old at Monopoly. He never had a kind word to say to anyone; backhanded compliments were his specialty, and he especially loved lobbing barbs at his daughters. “Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares.” “I didn’t think you’d understand that joke.” “You’re the smart one, and she’s the pretty one.” Lani realized the full extent of her father’s depravity, however, the night she first saw him beating her mother.

The sharp sound of shattering glass and her mother’s piercing shrieks startled Lani awake in the dead of night. She heard more unusual noises—the muffled thwack of fists pounding flesh, her mother breathlessly begging for mercy, and her father, furious but slurring, a drunken pig. Checking to be sure her baby sister was still asleep, Lani hopped out of bed. The storm surge built inside her; she grabbed the nearest item she could find, a toy baton, and rushed out of her room to confront her father. At the entrance to the living room, Lani saw everything—her mother sprawled on the floor, tears and bruises covering her face, and her father towering menacingly above, such a brave man slugging a woman who had already surrendered. The seawalls inside her broke, and Lani surged forward to save her mother, right into a backhand to the face from her father.

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He begged for forgiveness afterward. They always do, just like the coastal dwellers try to rebuild in a way that will survive the storm season. Houses on stilts, concrete and steel, seawalls. So much effort to make Mother Ocean conform to their will. Eventually, they forget, and build too close to shore. They trample over the sand dunes for a better view, forgetting that the dunes are there for their protection. In their hubris, they build high rise condominiums on shifting sand and hope the buildings don’t tilt until the units are all sold. Mother Ocean plays the long game, though, and she never forgets.

Lani finds a broken knobbed whelk shell with a beautiful red streak inside its mouth. Hopefully, the former occupant whelk found itself a more suitable home. Lani will use the gorgeous scarlet section in her current piece and save the knobby part for later.

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The red mark from her father’s strike had long since faded from her face, but Lani’s fury drove her, created purpose. She had to harness her anger’s power and use it to save herself and her family from her father. A sickening thought, but she had no other choice. He was a lost cause. Lani worked rigorously on her temper, not allowing him to goad her into a blind fury before she was ready. Her skin thickened, and she lost all semblance of affection for the man. He was merely an obstacle in her game.

Among his few hobbies, besides drinking to excess and terrorizing his family, were collecting guns. Her father had many of them, and he never kept them locked away. Lani attributed his carelessness to his underestimation of her; he never believed she would cross him. His mistake. Lani watched him take target practice before. She knew how to load the pistols and which ammunition to use. A teenager now, she swiped one from a shelf he rarely checked and began practicing in the woods behind the house. Her accuracy had improved just enough for her purposes. When the time was right, she would be ready.

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Lani moved further down the shoreline to the location of the old spit. The hurricane breached it in several locations and overwashed the higher spots. The entire spit was flattened and mostly underwater now. Buried in the sand, just below the surface, Lani found a treasure trove of sea glass. The spit snared beautiful, smooth blue and aquamarine pebbles that would sparkle once they were cleaned and polished a bit. Mother Ocean outdid herself on those. They were perfect. A little farther out, Lani unearthed bits of a broken bottle, clear jagged glass, ugly and raw. She kept all of it.

Although the wading birds would miss their favorite spot to wander out for deeper fishing, Lani was glad the spit was gone. The tourists from next door ignored the signs and took their beach chairs (and their trash) out there, inevitably getting caught at high tide. Even if you don’t understand Mother Ocean, at least read the signs the locals have given you!

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Lani’s father had never been good at reading signs either. He certainly couldn’t read his daughters. Or maybe he just didn’t want to. If he had paid attention, he would have noticed that Lani didn’t worship him anymore, and she damn well didn’t love him. Nor was she afraid of him. He was a problem that she had to solve. Fortunately for Lani, her father had become incredibly predictable. Every Friday night, he went out drinking into the wee hours of the morning. This weekend would be the best time to put her plan into action.

When he returned on Saturday morning, Lani’s father could not get the door open. A paranoid drunk, he immediately assumed someone had changed the locks and began cursing at his wife who was cowering in the back bedroom. The sharp sound of shattering glass, now familiar, reached Lani’s ears as her father punched his way through the back door. Lani cradled the pistol and waited. When he breached the door, she confronted him—two shots for good measure. Her father was dead.

The police inquiry was all very perfunctory. No one doubted that she and her mother believed someone was breaking into their home. The shattered back door, the blood on his hands, his broken fist from punching at the door, all supported this story. How were they to know that the man of the house would be attempting to break into his own home at 3 am?

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There’s no real calm after a storm, not immediately. The sea still surges; the wind still gusts. The water lacks clarity for days. The man has been gone for ten years now, and yet the water roils. Lani has been reckoning with the legacy of a man-child who had no business being a father for her entire life. She carries the weight of someone twice her age, probably because she was an adult before she was a teen. Recalling what she lost, what will never be, Lani feels the rage rise in her again like one last storm gust.

Lani knows she can’t give in to it like he did. She must overcome it, use it, make something new with it. She inhales the salty air deeply and slowly, feeling the bite of the wind and sand on her face. Lani has chosen to refashion the aftermath of these storms into something lifegiving. And so, she paces the shoreline after every storm, saving sea creatures and collecting interesting detritus, making art out of Mother Ocean’s debris.

Lani brings her newest treasures to her studio, carefully cleaning and polishing as necessary. Once each item has been cleaned and dried, she brings out her current piece, a mixed media of a young girl with wide eyes full of fury and fear. Lani glues the scarlet bits from the whelk shell to the girl’s cheek and at her feet, she places the shards of broken bottle. Finally satisfied with her work, Lani signs the piece and names it—“Rage is a Cleansing Fire”.