SITTING IN WET KNICKERS AND WISHING

My first dip into the sea was a very long time ago, in a different country and what seems to me a different lifetime. I was in Standard One and the nuns took us on a trip to the seaside, to a place called Morib. They might as well have said that we were going to the moon because it was a long bumpy journey on the school bus, full of song, chatter and laughter, which took about three hours. On the way, we stopped at Port Swettenham and I was in total awe of the great big ships and the vast expanse of blue, fringed with emerald green mangrove swamps. We were specifically told to bring our swimsuits with us… but we never had any to begin with. We had hardly tumbled out of the bus, when the nuns bellowed out….`JUMP IN GIRLS!’…` BUT HOW?’… we asked in shock. Finally we splashed in, the younger girls, shrieking in delight…in our knickers…mine were the big white cotton ones Mum made us. The older ones waded into the sea in their gathered dresses, which ballooned out in the water. They sat in the sea like big colourful mushrooms. What a great time we had! The only thing I remembered on the way back home, sitting on the school bus in my wet knickers, was the enduring taste of joy and freedom. As the red bus rumbled out from under the shade of the casuarina trees, I looked back at the sea sparkling in the late afternoon and the stretches and stretches of white sandy beach and felt a certain longing and made a wish.

Well it looks like wishes do come true. I now live on this long picturesque mountainous island, skirted by turquoise blue seas. In Greece, everybody swims. It’s second nature to them. Yiannis taught me how to swim. But you know what they say about teaching an old dog new tricks. I was learning how to swim as an adult with limbs frigid with fear. I wouldn’t go in too deep and splashed about so much, trying to keep my head above water, that others thought I was in need of help. Gradually, I became more relaxed and started swimming …at least I call it that… lengthwise along the beach as I was still afraid of the deep, where my toes couldn’t reach the sandy bed.

Then Yiannis bought a boat with a cabin so that we could travel to the other islands. The boat was delivered to us at Kolymbari, a marina some 23 km from Chania. The new skipper stood on the boat proudly as they gently slid it down the ramp into the sea. He started the engines and slowly coasted the stone embankment of the marina. I was walking alongside and he shouted out to me…`JUMP ON TO THE BOAT!’…` WHAT?’ I screamed out in panic. The embankment was around three feet above the water and he was moving and I was doing a quick trot to keep up and he kept shouting…` JUMP! JUMP!’…He was new at this skippering business and I could sense the mounting tension in his voice and the embankment appeared to be getting higher. So in wild panic, I jumped…and managed to land on the deck in one piece. You might have a lot of questions at this point… like why I didn’t go on the boat with him in the first place etc etc. I don’t know why and he doesn’t either. But the ride back, slicing the surface of the water in the twin engine towards the port of Chania, with the evening sun melting in the sea, was magical.

We started off with small weekend trips on the boat. There however, was one little niggling problem…when we anchored along some coastline to jump into the sea for a dip…HOW WOULD I MANAGE IN THE DEEP SEA WHERE MY TOES COULDN’T TOUCH THE BOTTOM?…The skipper had a brilliant idea. We could throw out a lifebuoy ring, tied to the boat with a very long rope, which I could hold on to and paddle in the deep. In the beginning I was terrified even to climb down the ladder, jump into the sea and grab the ring. I kept asking…  …`HOW DEEP IS IT?’…And he would answer… ` `AHH…LIKE YOU’RE ON TOP OF A TEN STOREY BUILDING.’…` WHAT?’… I froze and he went with his classic…`JUMP! JUMP!’…Kazantzakis said…` A man needs a little madness or else…he never dares cut the rope and be free.’ Madness or desperation or both, I’m not sure. But once again I jumped blindly, grappled with the ring which flipped over and I did a couple of somersaults in the water before I finally steadied myself. There were one or two other boats around, with people diving into the water or swimming about and I’m sure I caused a spectacle. But I couldn’t worry about that when I was struggling to stay afloat.

Then after many such trips, I got comfortable and a certain confidence glided through my body, enough for me to push the ring out and swim towards it. One day, under a perfectly blue summer sky, where the water was glassy and cool, I shoved the ring out as far as I could and started moving towards it. I couldn’t believe that I was actually swimming in that bottomless sea, without any support. I even started practising my strokes, all the while keeping my eye on that bright orange ring, bobbing in the water. After a while I got a little tired but felt this huge sense of comfort when I approached the ring, my finger tips reaching out for it, almost touching it… Then Annie appeared out of nowhere and swam away with my life support. Children are dangerous that way because everything is a game for them. I shouted for Yiannis but he was far away like a dot in the sea. I looked around for Annie desperately. She was nowhere in sight. Then I started treading water frantically and thrashing about, my mind flashing images of finally succumbing to a watery grave… when she appeared behind me with the ring, giggling.

I got my wish to live next to the sea and I got something else thrown in as a bonus…to live near the mountains. If the sea gives me a sense of freedom despite my fears, the mountains give me a dopamine rush…without having to JUMP. I hope I won’t have to…bungee jumping is becoming all the rage among older people these days. What’s wrong with them? Anyway, last Sunday we decided to drive through the Theriso Gorge, which is about 17 km from Chania. As you enter the gorge, the rugged cliffs rise, towering on either side, giving you a sense of their untamed majesty. Below them are plane trees and chestnut and oak trees, their leaves rustling gently in the cool draughts and streams fed from melting snow from the White Mountains. But now in summer they are reduced to a mere trickle. This is where the historic insurrection, the Theriso Revolt in 1905 started, with the young Venizelos in the lead and the mountains standing obstinate and proud despite the thundering blasts of ammunition.

We drove through the village and zig zagged all the way up to about 700 hundred metres. We’ve done this trip a million times and the mountains never seem to change, except with the seasons …snowy white in the frozen months of winter, fresh and green in spring and the beginning of summer. It was a breathtaking scene from where we were standing, with the wind whipping my hair on my face and our long baggy shorts fluttering like flags around out legs. Behind us loomed the majestic White Mountains of Crete. Spread out below us was a contour of green wooded mountains of cypress, chestnut and olive trees. Clumps of herbs and pink oleander gripped the slopes and blue ridges rippled in the far horizon. The only sound was the tinkling of goat bells and in the clear blue skies, hawks glided like kites in search of prey.

We had feasted our eyes on the scene and now it was time to sit down to a simple village meal in the fresh mountain air. We stopped at a tavern on a lofty perch and sat under a thatch of grape vines with unripe bunches of green grapes hanging down. Kazantzakis wrote…` I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing was happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut…the sound of the sea. Nothing else.’… But I must admit, we didn’t go that frugal. We savoured our happiness with pan fried fennel pies, grilled lamb chops, crisp around the edges and the flesh tender and flavoured with mountain herbs. On the side we had boiled wild greens and pickled hyacinth bulbs and… a flask of chilled white wine to quench our thirst.

Cheers!