The boat was moored about 150 metres off the shore and the skipper had gone to bed. She took me by the hand and we walked up on deck, out of the stifling cabin and the tangled sheets. She dropped her towel and slipped almost silently in to the water. Phosphorescence lit up the dark surface around her body. She swam a few strokes away from the boat and beckoned.
I didn’t want to wake the children, though the lullaby sea took care of their slumber. The water was welcomingly cool and calm. The white sparks of the phosphorescence lit up the sea with every stroke and I submerged myself in its glow. A few strokes and I was with her. “Thank you for getting me up”, I said. There is little more magical than being afloat in a sea with your lover, striking distance from the shore of an Ionian Island. Every movement bringing a cascade of minute water sparks that mirror the canopy of Heaven above – like swimming in the night sky as an Olympian God, wreaking havoc in the Universe. Our limbs entwine under the water and send galaxies cannoning into one another.
We look up to the sky and smile. There is just love in the air around us. Our little boat rises and falls ten feet distant, a home adrift in space. We are cosmonauts of the ocean. As we tread water, we hold hands. This is bliss. Our quiet words float over the tips of the swell and we move back towards the boat. Pulling our bodies up the ladder in the stern, the evening air makes us sigh with pleasure. The warmth envelopes our wet skin and we are cool at last. The heave of the deck beckons us to sit in the stern and just breathe it all in.
Wrapped in a toga’d bedsheet, she whispers to our boy to come up from his sleep and swim. Blearily, he slides into the water. The spectacle of a billion creatures illuminating his limbs at every glide of his hands lights up his face. It is an unforgettable first and only adds to his smittenness with all things sea-soaked. Our sailor lad. Swimming like the Ancients on a third watch around our slumbering vessel. It is our night swim. Gentle, calm and ocean free.
The Ionian Sea, off the coast of Keffalonia, August 2019.