Two Perfect Days by the Sea Reminded Me That Happiness Is Something I Deserve to Keep Coming Back To By Emie
Some gifts arrive once and leave a single beautiful memory behind. But the best gifts are the ones that come back, that prove themselves not as accidents of good fortune but as something you can return to, something that waits for you with the same generosity each time you arrive. I was lucky enough to have that kind of gift twice. Once on the twenty-second of June and again on the fifth of July, I found myself by the sea with my friends, and both times the world offered me exactly what I had not known I needed most.
The first trip and the second were different in their details but identical in the feeling they left behind. That particular fullness that comes from a day spent entirely in the right company, doing nothing more complicated than enjoying being alive. We ate together, the kind of shared meal that always tastes better outdoors with the sound of the sea nearby, food passed between hands and savoured without rush, conversation flowing easily around the table the way it does among people who have nothing to prove to one another and everything to enjoy.
Then came the beach itself, and with it the particular freedom of sand beneath your feet and open sky above your head. We played games on the sand, the kind of simple games that remind you of something younger and lighter inside yourself, that bring out laughter before you even realise it is coming. There is no pretending on a beach. No careful composure or professional distance. There is only the game and the sand and the people beside you, and everything else falls away as naturally as shoes left at the water's edge.
We swam in the sea and the cold of it was the best kind of shock, the kind that makes you gasp and then immediately want more. The water held us and the waves moved around us and for those hours in the sea there was nothing in the world except the present moment, complete and sufficient and asking nothing further of us. The cool breeze carried the salt air across our faces as we dried off and settled back onto the sand, and the sound of the waves became the background to every conversation, every joke, every quiet moment of simply sitting together and being content.
We took photographs throughout both days, not because we needed evidence of our happiness but because happiness of that quality deserves to be kept. Looking back at those images I can feel exactly how each moment felt, the warmth of the sun, the texture of the sand, the particular expression on a friend's face mid-laugh that captures something true about who she is and why I love her company. Those photographs are small but genuine treasures.
And then, on both days, as the afternoon softened into evening, there was the sunset. We watched it together, that slow and magnificent transformation of the sky, colours shifting from gold to orange to the deep rose that only exists in those last minutes before the light goes. There is something about watching a sunset with people you care about that makes the watching feel like more than just observation. It feels like gratitude made visible, like the world offering a final generous gift at the end of a day that has already given so much.
That gratitude is something I want to honour beyond the beauty of two days at the beach. Because these days, as wonderful as they were, exist within a larger story, the story of what it means to be a domestic worker building a life in a country that has not always made that building easy. The joy of those afternoons is real and complete in itself, and it is also a reminder of what is worth fighting for.
The right to change employer without restriction is worth fighting for because a worker who is trapped in a harmful situation cannot arrive at a beach on a summer afternoon with a full and easy heart. The anxiety of an impossible working situation travels with you and quietly colours everything, even the most beautiful days. Freedom from that trap means freedom to be completely present in the moments that restore you, and restoration is not a luxury for domestic workers. It is a necessity.
The right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa is worth fighting for because both of those beach days were possible partly because this community exists, and this community can only continue to exist for its members if those members are able to stay. Renewal means continuity. It means that the friendships built on beaches and in fruit fields and at rallies in front of Parliament do not keep getting severed by forced departures. It means that the joy of one summer can grow into the joy of many summers, deepening and enriching with every year that passes.
The right to settlement is worth fighting for because the woman who watched that sunset on the twenty-second of June and again on the fifth of July, who laughed on the sand and swam in the cold sea and ate good food with people she loves, has built something real here. She has woven herself into a community and a life that deserves a permanent home. Settlement says that the weaving counts, that it cannot simply be undone by an expiring document, that the life constructed with such care and such love belongs here as securely as anything else.
And the right to British citizenship is worth fighting for because the sunsets I watched from that British beach belong to me as much as they belong to anyone. This country, its coastlines and its seasons and its communities and its possibilities, is part of my life now in ways that go deep and run true. Citizenship would simply confirm what is already real. That I am not passing through. That I am here, fully and finally and forever, with every right to watch the sun go down over the sea and call it my own. Two days. Two sunsets. A lifetime of reasons to keep going. I will always cherish them both.
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