A father walked in the sand with his daughter, their pants and hair whipping with the morning’s first breath of wind. A sun that had not yet crept over the horizon lighted the sky as they walked northward along the shore, just out of reach of the water, in silence, gazing out, lost in lonely memories rather than savoring these last moments. The ocean whispered, mockingly, and the father stopped his stride; his eyes, lost at sea, looked as if they belonged to someone being painfully forced to accept death at an unexpected time and location right before being murdered. I was in college when I found her. Her name was Elizabeth. She was beautiful, full of life and energy, herself wild and untamed. It was as if all the details and peculiarities of her beauty were secrets only beheld to me, her eyes seemed as if they were the first I had ever bore witness to. We stood in crowds all alone; and while the world was distracted, I stole her heart. I was born on the first day we kissed; she infused in me a life I had never experienced before. We loved each other as young lovers do; a sickening display to all outside observers. Though my eyes, freshly opened, beheld and entertained all of the details of the world I had somehow never seen, she could never escape from my view; I saw her in everything, and when I saw her, I saw only her eyes. They commanded my attention and I was forever lost in the swirls of green and gold. They snatched my focus from across the room the first time I saw her. She was eating in the dining hall, sitting across from a friend, animatedly talking with her hands, giving some poor chip the ride of its life before she tossed it in her mouth between sentences. She caught my stare, pausing in her sentence for a split second before continuing on. She played the fool through the rest of her meal, but caught my eye once more, knowing I had been gazing all the while, as she stood to leave. It was a month before I saw her again. His daughter, Lily, did not question him; she stood next to him with her arms crossed in defense of the deathly chilling wind not natural to late summer mornings; then, after a moment, she gently pulled him back to dry land by his elbow and continued along their intended course.
They walked back to their chairs as the morning air thawed with the rising of the sun. Reading under the shade of an umbrella, digging toes deep into the cool sand, he read Faulkner while Lily lay out in the sun doing the morning’s crossword. He looked over and watched her bite her pencil as she pondered over a five letter word for forgiveness, looking exactly like her mother did at that age. Elizabeth died in labor and though she pervaded constantly upon their lives, living on through her painful absence, they rarely spoke of her. They used to vacation to this spot when Lily was younger; days lost to broken memories intruded their thoughts as they silently embraced the morning.
Unable to focus—the wind stirring his pages too violently—he was reminded of mornings he had shared with Lily here. He looked down at baby Lily, her eyes glowing green and shimmering gold with the reflection of the sun; sitting in the puddle he had made, she looked like a pale little bear cub, like one of those stuffed dress-up bears you make yourself, in her cute baby swimsuit and matching bucket hat.
Outstretched fingers and palms
Scooping up globs of malleable wet sand
Putting it to her lips every now and again
Always forgetting the bitter and the grit
Actions with no insight
Meaning with no words
Closing the gap between heaven and earth
Watching it fall like Lucifer to hell
Finding truth in the plain of day
Revealing all to open eyes
Actions with no insight
Meaning with no words
In that moment, he loved her; feeling the pride swell in his chest. She played curiously in her little puddle. Little lumps of sand rested on the brim of her hat and on her shoulders and thighs. He wondered as he watched who she would grow up to be and how rocky was the path laid before them. Elizabeth—he was so lost without her, always asking for her help with Lily—he shouldn’t be doing this alone. She sat there not looking at him, not looking at him so much he doubted whether he was there—he can’t take her slipping away. She stood to leave and made a run towards the sea. He trailed behind, looking down upon her as she ran ahead pulling him like a kite by an invisible string. She ran to drown memories, a love, a life, in the sea. Elizabeth! Just as she reached the foam of the swallowing sea, he snatched her up; his eyes stared out, searching beyond the horizon for the monster mocking him, beckoning his fate. Dusting the sand off her face and chest, he clutched baby Lily close as he walked back to the umbrella.
Running late. I live in a world that is a minute and a half behind the rest. I’ve accepted it; tides constantly rise and fall. I’m headed to some lit course; shoes squeaking down halls.
There she sits. On a couch along the wall, reading. I slow my pace; a jogger seeing fire falling from the sky. I toss her a relieved smile; time strolls on by.
I utter a shy hi. I forget my class and myself as soon as I lock into those eyes. I ask easy questions; her eyes grant me grace. I smile and nod; children chasing daisies in a field of open space.
We begin to walk. Aimlessly roaming campus with eyes locked as we talk. Our hands brush one another; light shining in a darkened room. Her hair is soft in the wind; watching an amaryllis bloom.
They played bocce ball as the sun ascended towards heaven, giving wind to Peter concerning upcoming arrivals. They laughed softly as they played; fingers constantly brushing hair out of eyes. This game had been going on for years, always interrupted by life and winter. Lily made the rules when she was younger. She always made him go first, enjoying knocking his ball further away more than just trying to get close herself, begging for a re-do after any ill-fated attempt. Her ten year old body was long and skinny, her hair long and straight, her suit hiding flowers not yet blossomed. Standing there in her innocence she knew not of her power to torture, her ability, her destiny to kill; kill through loving; kill through living; remember—mock—evoke—torture—retreat; the whipping wind only ensuring the reality of it; the ocean crying out, tempting.
I invested all of my being in loving her, and I was not left unsatisfied or unrewarded; she was the ambition of my soul. A cloud does not obscure a sunset from the world; rather it reflects and reveals all the natural glory in the hidden colors and throws them upon the sky for the world to ponder in awe; for even the most ill-tempered bastard, obsessed only with worldly worries, can bear witness to it and breathe calmly a sweeter air.
Elizabeth became pregnant about a year after we got married. I raced the sun to the horizon as we drove to the hospital. I tried to remain calm; sweat dripped off the steering wheel, and my heartbeat occupied my throat. The future of our lives was upon us. I could already see all of the moments I would come to reminisce: those first steps, the school plays, the first kiss and first heartbreak, and in each of these I was holding Elizabeth, proud to be the one affected by it all.
At the hospital, her screams penetrated and reverberated within all the physical matter of the room; all of the pain, the agony, the frustration and the joy, issued forth from the deepest realms of her being. She gave of herself everything to give life, and stole away with her, everything of me. Her screams subsided with the first innocent whimpers. Her eyes, the first I ever saw, turned to me, brighter and more exuberant than ever before, like a star just before its death. I was alive. The life fled from her eyes and turned an ashen gray. She stole with her the light of the cosmos; leaving me blind and unoccupied, an abandoned infant in this new sunless world.
I lay with Elizabeth, her eyelids covering the recent stare of death, and held Lily, our beautiful new baby girl. I stared into Lily and saw a pair of eyes I had seen once before, in another life perhaps, yet the loss and hurt I felt was so raw and unaccustomed. She looked at me like I was the poor victim of some cruel joke, as if she knew she had robbed me of everything I held dear. She stripped me of all meaning and reason; I was now her captive, enslaved to my misery. Forever was I left to suffer within those eyes. I laid there, in the proudest and most devastating moment in my life, and cried. I cried. I cried because I knew, even then, that I could never forgive her.
She grabbed him by the arm, bringing him again back from the sea.
“Come on Dad, that’s enough bocce.”
He turned to her, a countenance she had always known, tears welling quietly in his lost eyes. A tear panicked and jumped ship from his eyelid as he looked into her eyes, a sea of green, the sun shining gold. The ocean roared.
“I know, Dad. I miss her too.” She hugged him. “I love you.”
“I love you too Lily.” He wiped the tear on the crown of her head. “Our last summer together; I’ll miss these days. I’ll miss you.” They stared out at the sea, one unknowingly anchoring the other from drifting out. She let go.
“I’m going to lie out and nap for awhile.” She squeezed his arms and walked back towards the umbrella.
The wind whipped. The foam and the water washed up against his toes and ankles, no longer tempting him from afar. A beast beckoned from the dark, claiming he was the keeper of what should have been. That place he had been searching for, every day gazing hopefully to the horizon, searching for what called to him, lay beyond its limits. The water was cold; he was waist deep; the water was real. It was time to find her; he headed towards the horizon; whatever lay beyond was just a short ways past. He would only need one last breath as his head went under. Lily was sunbathing, dreaming. Under the water, he looked up through his sea of green; rays and flecks of gold shimmered all about in the gleam of the sun. Under the water, the voice of the beckoning beast was clear.
“Love her, like you love me.”
Upon that final truth, he roared to the beast and then inhaled the sea, inhaled the monster from afar, inhaled the pain, then peace.
Ingredients of Self 