Vol. 22 - A Letter to My Unborn Son from the Edge of an Ocean
On possessions and worlds made of water
Early last week I rode a fat bike eighteen miles alongside the breaking waves of the Atlantic Ocean. That story is coming soon with an outlet I’ve long wanted to contribute to, so, you know, exciting. But the whole time, I was thinking of this letter that I had written to my son a few months before he arrived.
Enjoy.
Hey Kid,
I’m sitting at the shorebreak on Masonboro Island. You’ll know this place soon enough. Your mom’s uncle Jim owns a house down a little inlet called Whiskey Creek where we often visit.
This place is important, kid. This place is sacred to your mom, as it was her mom’s favorite place on Earth. Carol, one of the grandmas you’ll never meet, thought that if there was a heaven, Whiskey Creek might be it.
We chugged down the creek as Uncle Jim piloted his little boat named Gratitude, passing by memory the jagged little oyster beds. We passed other boats, other Sunday revelers, other campers coming back from Masonboro, and found ourselves out in the Intercoastal Waterway. Uncle Jim opened up the boat’s little motor and we zipped over the wake from bigger boats with silly boat names like Box Office or Red Lady or Whiskey Shivers and soon we arrived at the sandy edge of Masonboro.
It’s totally deserted, kid, nothing here but sandpipers, ghost crabs, and the crash of the waves on the beach. It reminds me of the place I grew up. But only in the fall, after all the summer tourists left and the beach was just ours again.
The water is warm even though it’s mid-October and your mom just took a little dip in the crashing waves. I wonder if you felt them in there. I wonder what the might of the ocean sounds like in your little world.
I look to your mom and Uncle Jim remarks how lucky we both are that she is in our lives. I pull a perfect honeycrisp apple from the green bag she’s always toting, the one with the snacks. Soon, perhaps, it will be full of granola or sweet little mandarin oranges for you to come grab when you get hungry from chasing the shorebreak. Sooner still, perhaps, it’ll be full of bottles of milk for when it’s my turn to feed you, for when your mom needs a break.
This bag comes everywhere with us, kid. Every time we load my big white pickup for a trip to Charlotte or D.C. or Wilmington or New Jersey, there is the green bag, full of carrots and hummus, granola and oranges, bottles of water and maybe even the occasional Twix bar.
The bag is sturdy and it will last a long time. You’ll dig through it, yelling to your mom, wondering where the good stuff is, yelling to me that you’re too small to carry it when you grow old enough to start warranting some responsibility.
I look at the bag and I think of all of the things that remind me of my own mother. Susie. The other grandma you’ll never meet.
I think of her glasses. Those are her most important possessions to me now that she’s gone, kid. She loved big, loud glasses, kid. I’ll show you pictures someday. And when she died, I took many pairs. I offered some to my sister and my father, and they took some. But I kept several pairs for myself. Some sit in my desk drawers where I write, some hide away in the back of my truck’s glovebox, one pair hangs in my kitchen, watching over my stove, reminding me to always cook with love.
I wonder, kid, what talismans you’ll hold dear when we’re gone. I wonder which little reminders of me and your mom will litter your life.
I wonder if perhaps you’ll hide my own glasses, which are as inextricable from my face as my nose, my mouth, or my eyebrows, in little important places around your life. I wonder if you’ll hold them in your hands and remember me long after I’m gone.
Most certainly my guitars. Maybe you’ll keep them locked away and only take them out on occasion to look, to hold, to play. Maybe you’ll play them every day. Maybe your battlescars will be dug in right beside my own, the memories of a million rock and roll shows etched forever in our beloved guitar. Maybe your son or daughter will someday inherit my guitars, the way that you’ll someday inherit my father’s collection of Grestches and Fenders and Rickenbackers.
I wonder, kid, if you’ll pack the green bag someday for your own family. I wonder if we’ll still be here when you do. I wonder if this bag will become one of the many physical remnants of your relationship with your mother. I wonder if you’ll think of her when you taste granola or when the juice from a perfect orange trickles down your chin. I wonder if the bag will sit in the back of your truck someday, as it now does in mine.
I wonder if you’ll hold it in your hands and think of your beautiful, strong, kind, good, amazing mother. I wonder if you’ll see her then as I see her in this moment, perfect along the shorebreak on a beach to which you’ve never been.
Love,
Dad
I love this!!