Gray Birchby
Remembering the Ocean Chapter Eight: In which my father asks me to go into the ocean “No.” Chapter One: In which I go to the ocean for the first time There is sand and salt and shells and I love this place, so full of sunlight. I am four years old and I fall under the water and then (Though I am only under for a second I spend an hour there, in that beautiful land under the ocean. I make a friend there, and she teaches me to speak the language of the fish. We swear to be best friends forever.) I am back, my parents smiling as I shake off the water. I tell them of my adventures and they listen intently, indulgently, unbelievingly. I have always had a good imagination. They do not know that I am not making things up when I say the ocean told me they love me. I fall asleep on the car ride home, covered in sand. Chapter Two: In which I go to the ocean, again, and again I return to that place many times, each time I dive under the water I am there again, time multiplied. During the school year I practice holding my breath, one minute, two minutes, my lungs scream and I picture being away from this place and back in my home with my friend. It is not that land is bad, it is just lonely, a place where it is too easy to be looked over and forgotten. I go to the pool in town and the lifeguards yell at me for being under the water too long, scaring them with how long I take to come up for air. I do not understand how anyone could be scared by the water.
17
