Every Time I Blink

There was something so odd about walking the beach in November. The shore is empty, save for occasional little clumps of fishermen, their legs covered in rubber waders and their hands full of beer. Without the sounds of the summer beachgoers the ocean was free to be as soothing or as surly as it liked. The first day I walked along an ocean calm, the water the color of oxygenated avocado, the sky a crayola blue. The waves rolled and bounced shells toward shore, the broken bits sounding like shards of glass laughing. I'd never heard that sound.

The second day the ocean looked furious. As far out as I could see was white foam and water the color gray one use to describe old love gone old. The wind whipped everything it could, the sky built gray atop gray, like painting with only two colors. Tumbleweeds of seafoam skipped and rolled down the shore. The fishermen were gone. There was no one. The seashells kept coming but didn't laugh like the day before.

Not surprisingly, I thought of an Ani DiFranco song:

“The sky is gray, the sand is gray, and the ocean is gray
And I feel right at home in this stunning monochrome
Alone in my way
I smoke and I drink and every time I blink I have a tiny dream
And as bad as I am, I'm proud of the fact that I'm worse than I seem.”

I didn't get to write at the beach. I let every sort of distraction get the best of me.

Father Figured

I don’t write about my dad as much as I should.

My dad is a hero of mine, and I say that without a sense of irony or exaggeration. He is entirely human (and thus, flawed) but, in my eyes, the sun rises and sets with him. I unabashedly love my father.

My dad moved out of the house when I was 8. The moment he sat me down to tell me he was leaving is one I will forever hold, not because I want to, but because it was such a benchmark. Likewise, I remember the day we loaded up the moving truck, I remember the smell of the cigars he smoked as we did the drive back and forth from his new house to what was now my mother’s house. I remember the day when I realized he wasn’t coming back home.

But the weekends spent at the farm with him were full of magic and adventure. He taught me to shoot, he converted an old chicken coop into a clubhouse for us, he helped me build the model rockets that we’d launch and chase across the fields. For my 15^th birthday, he bought me my first guitar.
I know that he has tried to be the best father he can be, and for me he has mostly succeeded. Much of what I know and love is because he taught me. Camping, canoeing, books, plants, the Redskins, guitar, music: the stuff of him in me. I carry that with pride.

It is difficult to be so geographically far from him. I moved in with my dad two weeks after I turned 17 and have called his house my home ever since. There were weekends when I’d choose to stay in and hang out with him instead of going out with my friends. His back porch is a sanctuary of sorts. He is my friend.

In a few weeks I’m meeting up with Dad in Virginia and then we are riding together to Canada, where we’ll camp for 8 days on a remote lake with other family members. I haven’t been on vacation with my dad since I was 16. I’m so looking forward to the time spent with him.