The water is cold. I make my way in gradually, letting myself be flooded with my element. I swim a couple of strokes, take a deep breath and plunge under, one metre, two, three. My ears are full of sea already; I can hear as if my head’s been rewired. All around me, the sun paints luminous shafts streaked with pink and lilac. A startled fish darts away. I linger down below for a moment. The noise lives in my ears, a faint hum that intensifies with the slightest movement, a bubbling. I hover motionless. I’ve still got air. I could cry right now. This is how I must have felt in utero, in an amniotic liquid just like this, where all my possibilities were birthed. And I really was born here, I think proudly. I uncross my legs and kick down hard to the sandy bottom. I let my body sway with the friction as I rise. I burst to the surface and release my air, take another mouthful. My heart is racing. I suddenly think of evangelical baptisms – they’re conducted here on this very beach, in the water, a ritual of welcome. No, it’s not the sea of travel magazines, it’s not a holiday. It’s a confinement or an embrace. Both at once. I turn to glance back towards Johnny Cay, which looks unreal to me. It’s the time of year when the foam doesn’t sketch itself against the stripe of the horizon, there’s no breeze, the waves don’t crash against the reef. The cay has something on one side that I don’t recognise, an odd structure of some sort, but it’s still an idyllic sight, more beautiful than the photos in those magazines, better than postcards. I look down, my legs hover, sardines flutter. The Cancún beaches are gorgeous, the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, Florida, Rio de Janeiro, but my island’s crystalline water is spectacular in a way I’ve never seen anywhere else. There it is – now I sound like I live here again. I laugh at our quintessential pride. I should make a wish. Let me have an idea, I ask the ocean. We islanders ask the sea for everything, it seems to me; she’s our fertile mother who conceives everything, concedes everything. I can’t think of a single purpose, a single longing. An idea would suffice, something to pursue, that would be solace enough, I need nothing else. I float on my back, my body like a star, open-armed, willingly adrift, floating in a current of soft undulations that keep my breathing gentle.