Postcards from Rethymno

On healing and salt water: memories and musings from a Cretan getaway.

On the operating table before my third, unplanned surgery, I lay still as the plastic surgeon introduced herself and explained what she was about to do.

With the aid of a junior doctor and operating room nurse, she would open up the stitches from my mastectomy site, which had been overcome by an infection too severe to treat with antibiotics; remove the tissue expander that had been installed to create space for a new breast; and gently wash out the prosthesis and two-week-old wound with a thorough rinse.

Depending on the state of the infection, the the prosthesis might be replaced with a new one or be disposed of altogether, changing the trajectory of my reconstruction entirely. I would only find out after I woke up. Did I have any questions?

“What are you going to wash it with?” was all I could come up with in the moment.

“Salt water,” she said. “We will clean out the inside with salt water.”

Golden hour plunge, Rethymno Beach.

Eight weeks later, I arrive in Crete to do the same with the rest of me.

It’s fascinating to me that (besides being sterilized for surgical use) the saline solution used to flush out the infection that had made me sick, thwarted my plans, and changed the course of my recovery has about four times the salt concentration of seawater. It’s essentially the same liquid, just… saltier.

I imagine that our inner lives, our interior spaces, could use with a good rinse every now and then.

To be carefully examined and handled with a knowing, gentle touch. To be flushed of everything that festers within and keeps us from healing. To be cleaned out by salt water, too.

Perhaps we are instinctively drawn to what heals us. Perhaps this is why I return to the sea again and again, especially after painful times, releasing my tears into its vastness and allowing my body to soften while it holds me.

Perhaps this explains why, after that first electric, cathartic plunge, I feel deliriously happy just to be here.

I could write volumes about Crete after almost a week of being here. We are staying in the city of Rethymno, on the north coast of the island. From long, detailed voice notes sent by my Greek friend Panos—delivered in low, conspiratorial tones as if dishing out local gossip—I learn that Rethymno is more alternative and artsy than the major cities of Chania and Heraklion on either side of it.

I’m no stranger to Greece, but the food in Crete has absolutely floored me. There is Greek cuisine, then there is Cretan cuisine.From my writer friend Trish, who met a hot Greek musician on a writing retreat and now summers here (living the dream!) I learn that Crete’s robust domestic agriculture enables every meal, from the simplest roadside taverna to the gracious fine-dining establishments of the Old Town, to be a stupendous feast for ridiculously cheap.

Because the way to my heart is through my stomach, Crete now owns me.

Sun-starved after the worst Dutch summer in memory, we spent our first days careening from one beach to another as though crazed by the heat: from the crashing waves of Lappei on the outskirts of the city, to the gentler swells of Rethymnon just a stone’s throw from the Old Town, to the no-frills boho vibes of Ammoudi, on the Libyan Sea.

It was at Lappei, during golden hour, that I felt my breath drop deep into the bottom of my belly, so low it was as if I could inhale and exhale from the center of my pelvis and small of my back.

A catch had been undone in my body; I could suddenly breathe deeper than I had in months—deeper than the day my friend and trainer Fred, himself a cancer survivor, told me: Your cancer journey is over. It’s done. Deeper than before the mastectomy.

And it was at Ammoudi that I discovered I could once again swing my left arm in a broad, unhampered arc, fingertips flinging drops of salt water into the air in long, solid back strokes, slicing through the water in a full front crawl. For the first time since the surgeons excised the sentinel lymph node in my left armpit, I could move my shoulder and arm freely again.

Swimming is one of the few sports I love and can do well. Supported and upheld by salt water, I felt strong, capable, even lithe. For the first time in months, I felt that my body was my own again—that I could rely upon my body once more to move me through life the way I desire, instead of living in fear of its betrayal.

Of all the trinkets I have accumulated (I must now be physically restrained from the jewelry stores in Rethymno), flavors I have savored, and memories I have made here on Crete, it is this feeling that I wish to carry home with me when I return.

As always, I love to hear from you. Tell me a little bit about where you have been or where you are, what books you have read on holiday (I’m a third of the way through Elif Shafak’s richly immersive new novel, There are Rivers in the Sky), or what gifts the summer has brought you. Is it what you longed for and needed?

I wish you a beautiful end to your August, wherever you may be.