September 2003 Issue - Essay # 5
Sea
Change
By Susan
Moorhead
|
I
looked over at my future husband, innocently thumbing through a book on
salt-water fishing, and thought – “Yes.” Our
lives, centered on another island, did not offer immediate access to my
vision. He worked on Wall
Street; I worked on My
dream might have started with a simple photograph but it became
elaborately detailed over time. In
mind, I saw a large, wooden house with a welcoming front porch; wide,
front steps where I could sit and regard the lazily tended garden, the
long stretch of lawn littered with soccer balls, croquet mallets, and
sneakers soggy from the previous night’s rain.
From the kitchen window, there would be the faintest line of blue
visible to the seeking eye, and the sharp, salty tang of the sea air
would lace every breath I’d take.
From my office window, on the second floor, I could look over my
books and clippings and see my children running on the beach like shaggy
ponies, or pushing a small, weather beaten boat into the deep.
My husband liked this sea dream so much that he adopted it,
imagining his own home office adjacent to mine. Long
before the photograph was ever viewed, long before my husband and I met,
the seeds of the dream had found us and taken root.
My husband, moving every year as a child, wanted a home where
junk would pile up in the attic. Where
he could attend a small town meeting and know the names of everyone from
the local plumber to the cop on the corner.
Where his children slept in the same room from cradle to
adulthood. Where he could
pass on stability to them. He
grew up yearning to stay put. I
envisioned a home so beloved that my children, when grown, would return
each holiday, bringing their children with them.
Where the extra table leaves were used so often that they bent
under the weight of roasted turkeys and a variety of pies.
Where I could smell the sea air from each room, and see the ocean
from my bedroom window, because I always feel as if I am where I should
be when I smell salt air and gaze over gray, breaking waves. All
our vacations found us in It
seemed so reasonable at the time, to think we could just mark a course,
set sail, and go. My
daughter grew older, a son was added to our family mix, and with every
tear of a calendar page, my vision for my family fell farther back until
I could only see it from a great distance. We still talked about our
hopes to live by the sea, my husband thought of ideas for a shop we
might open. On vacations
we’d take our children to the places we had come to love, returning
time and time again to breathe in the sea air, and it would seem easy,
even reasonable again to map out our future living as native not
tourists in the sea side towns we had come to know so well. But
returning from those vacations into the schedule and needs of a regular
life with growing kids and all that entails, schools, pediatricians,
play dates, new shoes, clothes and school supplies, a need for secure
finances, for stability, made the plans we had sketched out over morning
coffee in a harbor-side café seem impossible.
Years had passed since I had first thought of the life I wanted
for myself, for my children. When
we made the move back to the very area I had once deemed unfit for my
wild pony children and my salty spun dreams, moved back for an easier
commute for my husband into the city, I realized it was time to let the
fraying and faded dream go. Not
just because it had gotten too far away from us but because it seemed to
cast a light of reproach on the lives we were leading, as if we had
failed, unable to give our children the kind of life we had imagined as
the perfect life, a life that would guarantee happiness. Not
so long ago, I sat on the couch trying to amuse the baby amid the chaos
of double play dates. My
daughter’s best friend had slept over, and the two sat on the living
room carpet, sweet in flannel pajamas and messy hair, making beaded
bracelets. My son and his
friend raced up and down the stairs, pausing only to tease the girls,
and then run away again as indignant shrieks followed them.
I was amused at the mayhem, taking the baby to the other room to
change his diaper, where I could hear the boys stomping like wild ponies
through the house, the girls now giving chase behind them. They’re
happy kids, I thought aimlessly, kissing a plump baby leg as he fussed.
And I stopped, struck hard by my simple observation.
I have happy kids. I
had to ponder this thought over a cup of tea and let it sink in. Sitting
in a favorite chair, looking over our yard, I saw haphazardly tended
flowers and toys strewn everywhere and a rabbit hutch, not the sea.
The favorite tree my children made magic hideaways out of old
sheets and imagination. The
terrace where the children roasted marshmallows over the grill after a
family barbeque. The wide
lawn where my daughter’s friends ran wild in pajamas waving
flashlights up at the trees, the starry sky.
This small suburban spot where my children were growing up, where
we thrived as a family. I
sipped my tea and thought about my old sea dreams, how they had been
dreams of a melancholy nature, dreams that would only be suited for
people of a melancholy bent. My
dreams wouldn’t fit these robust, vibrant lives that had miraculously
sprung forth from my husband and myself.
Somehow, despite ourselves, we had succeeded in giving them the
life they needed, instead of the life we wanted for them, and on the way
found happiness for ourselves as well. Our life had not fallen short of
the dream we had once held so dear.
Our life, instead, had become less about where we lived and more
about how we lived. I
realized our children feel anchored and secure in this home, not because
of the location or the scenery, but because this is the place they know
as home, where they are loved best, where they can flourish and grow and
bloom. And
that is, of course, what I wanted most for them all along.
|
|
Author's Biography I am a writer/mom/librarian/former mermaid from New York who writes late at night after the kids are tucked in and the grad school homework is done, and am currently wrestling with the uncooperative final chapters of a novel.
|
Essay
Reviews! Site Reviews! We'd
like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do
you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? Get notified! Would you
like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on
the Web? Tell a friend! Do you
enjoy the Seven Seas site?
|
|
Go back to the table
of contents
|
