Planted with love
June 29, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 30 Comments
“I’m comin’, Daddy,” my daughter answers.
Around here there are many signs of approaching spring, everything from the return of the robins to the spousal ducks waddling around our house. But nothing quite says spring like tilling the garden and planting what will become, with plenty of sweat and prayers, future groceries.
I like planting a garden. Like getting into the dirt. Especially on a cool Saturday in May when the sun’s out and there’s a gentle breeze blowing off the mountains.
I generally do very well keeping my priorities in line. I know what comes first and what doesn’t. The problem is that very often those priorities shift according to both season and day, which is a fact that certain small members of my family cannot comprehend.
For instance. A Saturday in March will revolve around a trip to Charlottesville or pizza with my folks. But a Saturday in May will revolve around one thing and one thing only: baseball. And when that Saturday afternoon game features the Yankees? Let’s just say I’m focused and leave it at that.
And yet here, now, my focus is not just on the game. It’s on the fact that the game started ten minutes ago and my daughter is taking her sweet time planting the beans.
I stand watching her, swinging the hoe in my hands like a baseball bat and tapping my boot into the dirt in the hopes that my aggravation will drain out of my foot and into the ground. She is crouched in front of me, slowly placing one seed a time into the furrow, then gently pressing down on it with a small finger.
“Honey,” I tell her, “you don’t have to do it that way. You sow beans.”
“How can you sew beans?” she asks.
“Not sow, sew,” I answer, then realize how absurd that sounds. “Like this.” I take a handful of seeds and wave my hand from side to side, spilling them into the dirt.
“I don’t think that’s right, Daddy.”
“Trust me,” I say, glancing at my watch. Fifteen minutes late. I’ve missed Derek Jeter’s first trip to the plate. “You trust me, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then whaddya say we do it that way?”
“No.”
“Why? You said you trusted me.”
“I do, but you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Oh. Okay, then.
“Why should we do it your way?”
She rises, dusts off the knees of her jeans, and looks me in the eye. “You’re not treatin’ the seeds right, Daddy” she says. “You’re just throwin’ them. I’m planting them.”
“But we’re gonna just cover them with dirt,” I explain. “Either way, they’re just planted.”
She shakes her head. “No, Daddy. With your way they’re just planted. With my way, they’re planted with love.”
“With love?”
“I take each bean and tuck it into the dirt, like it’s going to bed. And then I kiss it with my finger. And then I say in my head, ‘Please God, let this seed grow.’ Then it’s planted and I can do the next one.”
“So they have to be planted with love?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
“But if they have food and water, they’ll grow anyway.” I have her there. Think so, anyway.
“People grow with food and water, too,” she says. “But don’t they grow better with love?”
My foot stops tapping. I swing the hoe around, transforming it on one motion from a Louisville Slugger to a pole to lean on.
I gaze upon this little girl, bundled against a brisk May wind. I am her father. The provider. The food and water to her life. And she is my daughter, the fragile seed I’m coaxing to grow.
But I want her to do more than just grow. I want her to bloom. And I know she won’t with just food and water. She needs love, too.
The sort of love that comes from ignoring a ballgame and spending some time with my daughter in the garden on a cool Saturday in May.
So we stood there, the two of us, planting each bean one at a time until the sun snuck over the mountains and said goodnight.
June 29, 2009
And the beans? Well, judge for yourself:
Looks like my daughter’s on to something.
I missed that Yankee game, but I’m certain I watched the highlights. I can’t remember who won, though. Can’t remember how many hits Derek Jeter got or how many innings Andy Pettite went. Can’t remember any blown calls by the umps or all the things the announcers said that I disagreed with.
But I will always carry the memory of a father and his daughter planting four rows of beans, all with love. And I will remember that whatever planting I do in life needs to be done with love as well.
The Old Man
June 28, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
Redneck love
June 26, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 33 Comments
I’ve been following them now for five stoplights, all of which have turned from yellow to red just as we approached. Sitting here, staring at the rodeo decals on the back of his battered ’74 Ford.
Hanging from the gun rack in the back window are the two prerequisites every teenaged country boy must display in his truck—an axe handle and a lasso. Neither of which seem to have been touched since he first put them there.
But I suppose he hasn’t had the time to either get into a fight or rope a steer. Not with the young lady beside him. Right beside him. The absence of bucket seats and a console has allowed her to sit practically on top of him. “That’s the problem with those old trucks,” the older men around town say. “No power steering. Takes a fella and his girl both to drive the things.”
The lack of power steering, of course, has nothing to do with it. Love does. Despite all the red lights, I should have been halfway home by now. I just happened to get stuck behind two people who consider a red light as the perfect excuse to kiss.
And boy, do these two know how to kiss.
It’s been the same scenario every time—red light/brake/kiss/breathe/kiss. And then, a few moments after the light turns green, she pulls away and mouths I love you. He stares, not quite believing someone this special, this perfect, could ever say such words to someone like him.
I could pass them. Could blow my horn to get his attention onto the road rather than her. But I do neither. Not because I’m some sort of highway peeping Tom. Because I am witnessing one of the truly great things in this cold, dark, depressing world.
Young redneck love.
It is a marvelous thing, this phenomenon. Not rare, at least around here. But special nonetheless. Here are two people barely out of high school, waging war together against both fate and circumstance. Common sense and reality says that neither are college material. Both have likely moved into the job force, occupying one of the many barely noticed positions in town. Cashier or factory worker, maybe. And whether together or apart, both will face the very future that so many here have been given: lots of worry, lots of struggle, and not a whole lot of rest.
Yet here they sit anyway. Despite all the odds. Because they no doubt feel the odds don’t matter. In fact, nothing matters. Nothing in the world. They are together. Apart they may be down and out, struggling to find their own places in the world. Powerless and lost. But together? Together there isn’t anything they can’t overcome.
Love does this to people.
It convinces them neither that the world is too big or too little, but that the world just doesn’t matter. They have their own world, one full of rainbows and blooming flowers. Dinner at McDonald’s might as well be dinner at Sardi’s. Watching the semi-pro baseball team play on the field behind the fire department might as well be watching the Cubs at Wrigley. To them, there is no best place in the world. The best place in the world is wherever they happen to be at the moment.
The final light turns green. One more kiss/breathe/kiss/I love you later, and he turns his signal on for the next right. I drive past and cast them one more look. She’s sitting even closer now, her head on his shoulder. Riding off into the sunset, just where they belong.
Tonight when my head hits the pillow and I thank God for both today and the promise of some tomorrow, I’ll pause and think of this young couple. I’ll say a prayer that the angels watch over them.
And I’ll say another that they hang on.
(First publishsed as a column for the Staunton News Leader on June 20)
We have a winner!
June 24, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 29 Comments
Wow, you people sure know how to come out for a giveaway! Tuesday was a personal best in visitors to this blog. Maybe I should do this more often…
Congratulations goes out to The Reluctant Homefront, whose name was pulled out of my cowboy hat (my new black cowboy hat, mind you) by my children. She’ll be receiving an autographed copy of L.L. Barkat’s Stone Crossings. Hope you enjoy it. I know I did, and still do.
And speaking of L.L., she left a little note for you and me. It was a very kind gesture, and also typical of her personality. In an earlier email, L.L. had called me “cool” (and even added an exclamation point). She also called my readers cool as well.
I agree. No doubt about it. I have the coolest readers in Blogdom.
So while I brew a few pots of coffee and spend the night going over a manuscript that will be sent to an expectant agent in the morning, I’m going to turn the rest of this post over to L.L. I’m sure you’ll see why I think she’s pretty cool in her own right…
Dear Billy,
I’m so flattered that you want to be writer-me when you grow up. That’s pretty cool. Really.
I just have this… well… this concern… I’m kinda wondering (quietly, see) if you could stand the pressure to sometimes wear a dress and heels (personally, I don’t mind dresses, but I can’t stand high shoes; they hurt my knees and make me feel like a wanna-be giraffe). The way I see it, you’re more the cowboy-hat type–spinning tales by the fire. Tales that could make a man weep into his coffee or lose his chewing tobacco in a moment of pure hilarity. I guess you could push the issue, but then there’d be the sticky dilemma of publishing competition… you and me vying for the same spot on the shelf. No, I’m thinking your best bet is to be Mr. Billy Coffey.
But I understand. I used to want to be Annie Dillard or Anne Lamott. Some days I still catch myself wishing I was the Miss Ann Voskamp of the cyberworld. I never wanted to be John Grisham, but that’s because I’m the non-fiction type. Good thing. I don’t think I could stand having to churn out murder-he-wrote.
And see, that’s the thing. If I were any of those writers, I’d have to tell their stories in their ways. Then I couldn’t tell mine. I couldn’t write about what it’s like to be the child of parents who tallied eight marriages (I think they’re done now, thank goodness). I couldn’t explore the oddities of having 18 siblings, picked up along the way, marriage by marriage. I could still be funny if I wanted, but I’d have to cuss if I was Lamott; after the way I grew up, I don’t really have the heart for that.
Anyway, as far as I can tell, your readers like you just the way you are, telling stories that belong uniquely to your life in a way that opens things in their own lives. So let’s make a deal. You be you and I’ll be me. You wear the hat and I’ll wear a silver bracelet. And together we can lasso the world in grace.
Warmly,
L.L.
To which I will humbly reply: “Deal.”
My first giveaway!
June 22, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 59 Comments
I had a comment or two here and there, precious evidence that people were indeed out there somewhere. Still, I needed encouragement.
I got that encouragement one day. It came disguised as L.L. Barkat.
L.L. was one of the first regular readers I had, and her blog, Seedlings in Stone, was among the first I ever read on a regular basis (and I still never miss a post). Her words did and do astound me. Make no mistake. When I grow up as a writer, I want to be L.L. Barkat.
She mentioned to me that she had published a book, and I typed myself over to Amazon and bought Stone Crossings.
There are books a person devours and books that a person takes his time reading. Stone Crossings is unique because it’s both.
When L.L. contacted me last week wanting to know if I would be interested in doing a giveaway, it took me all of five seconds to say yes. This is a book that deserves to be read.
The Bench, Part II
June 21, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 11 Comments
Just so you know, I never saw Jordan again. Sometimes people pop into your life and then right back out again, leaving little more than footprints destined to be washed away by the tides of time (yes, I said “tides.” In my mind, I’m still at the ocean). But I think Jordan’s footprints will always linger on my own little stretch of beach. Whether mine have been washed away on hers, I cannot say.
So please, head on over there. I promise it’ll be worth your while. And be sure to stop back by here tomorrow, when I’ll be having my first ever giveaway of one of my favorites books by one of my favorite bloggers.
In praise of fathers
June 19, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 41 Comments
Yes, the Bible covers just about all we need in the way of raising children. Just about, though. But just as a lot of things were left out of the Bible that in my opinion really shouldn’t have been (what made Jesus laugh? For some reason, I really want to know that), there are a lot of things missing on how to be a dad.
Like what to do when your three-year-old daughter accidently locks herself in the bathroom and can’t figure out how to unlock the door (what I did: pull a Jack Bauer and kick the door in. Result: louder crying). Or what to do when your four-year-old son manages to shove his peanut butter and banana sandwich into the DVD player just because that’s not where it goes (what I did: “What were you thinking?” Result: “I dunno.”).
I wish the Bible was clearer on those sorts of things. I need the guidance. When it comes to fatherhood, I resemble more a turtle on its back than Ward Cleaver. Every father is like this.
For some reason the women tend to outnumber the men around here, at least as far as the comments go. I’m not really sure why that is, but I’m not going to think about it now. Now, I’m going to use that to my own advantage.
I’m not all that different than any other man, with maybe the only difference being I write down what I think rather than keeping it all inside. So on this Father’s Day weekend, I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, and I’m going to trust that you’ll know either your father or the father of your children is feeling the same way, even if they don’t always say it.
To the daughters out there:
Yes, we’re protective. And because of that, we’re hard on you. And as much as I would like to say that we’ll change that, I can’t. We won’t. We’ll always subliminally threaten your dates, we’ll always secretly distrust your husbands, and we’ll always think that no man is worthy of your love. We are or were hard on you in high school because we remembered well what we thought about as teenagers and how often we thought about it. We’re guys, and we know guys. That’s why we won’t change. You’re just going to have to deal with it.
We know early on that the day will come when you’ll give your heart to someone else. That Daddy will at some point vacate the pole position in your heart. We know it. It kills us anyway. Because no matter how old you are, in our minds you’re still in pigtails running to greet us at the door when we get home from work.
To the sons:
We’re harder on you, no doubt about it. We expect more, demand more, and need more. There is nothing in the world more difficult than raising a boy to be a man, if only because our culture now demands the opposite. There are a lot of people who’d rather boys remain boys, who believe that the strong, silent types are archaic and hurtful. They’re not. They’re needed. This world needs more men, men who will both love and fight, bend to God but never man, and dedicate their lives to standing for something bigger than themselves. Our country is defined not by its politicians or schools, not by opinions, but by the sort of men who walk its streets.
And to the wives of our children:
We don’t always show it, don’t always act it, but we take being the father of your children with the utmost seriousness. We work hard to provide for you, enduring things at our jobs that you cannot know because we don’t want to bother you with it. Yes, we know we should. But we also know that home is our haven, the one place where we can leave the world we hate for the world we love.
We’re quiet sometimes around our children. Withdrawn. We don’t mean to be. It’s just that they have managed to conjure within us a love we thought impossible, one that has taken us utterly by surprise. It’s a breathtaking love, what we feel for our children. And also frightening. Because we know what the world is like, we know what shadows lurk, and we know we are the ones responsible for keeping those shadows at bay.
Deep down, whether you know it or not, all we want is to be your knight. The one who protects you and our children, the one you feel safe with. All we do in life revolves around that one thought.
We want to be needed.
To be your hero.
Send me
June 18, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 36 Comments
Despite all of its tourism, Virginia Beach has always been a military town. The naval base was just down the road and to the right of our hotel, and the Oceanic Naval Air Station was just a few miles beyond that.
All of which made every day resemble a Fourth of July parade.
There were plenty of these on the way into town:
And once at the hotel, we saw many more of these:
And I wasn’t alone outside yesterday morning to watch the rain. I had company in the form of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, otherwise known as the United States Marines:
Add to all of that the parade of destroyers and frigates passing over the horizon and the steady stream of F/A-18 Hornets flying over my head, and I had a three-day testosterone high. It all became quite the Pavlovian experience. Every engine, every thump of a rotor, and every bellow of a drill sergeant would illicit from me an immediate stare and an even more immediate, “Awesome.”
I guess it was all that testosterone that nearly got me into a lot of trouble Tuesday morning.
My wife and I decided to have an early breakfast at a nice little restaurant down from our hotel. One that didn’t promise the kind of food you could neither pronounce nor eat without proper instruction.
We decided to make our return trip via the sidewalk rather than the boardwalk, thereby avoiding the daily throng of joggers, walkers, and rollerbladers. After all, a good breakfast should always be followed by some good peace and quiet. And that’s exactly what we had for a while. Until I looked up and saw the four men jogging toward us.
“What are these guys doing?” I asked. “Don’t they know to run on the boardwalk with everyone else?”
“Don’t worry about it,” my wife told me.
But I did.
Maybe it was the fact that they weren’t following the rules. Maybe it was the identical blue T shirts with fancy emblems all four of them were wearing. I didn’t know. I did know, however, that there was no way four little jogging club nerds were going to make me move. Oh, no. They were going to get out of my way.
My wife began to veer off to the side, giving them ample room to maneuver past us. I stayed put. Our locked hands went from slack to taut, nearly pulling her off her feet.
“Let them move,” I said. “The sidewalk’s ours.”
She rolled her eyes. It was not the first time she had done so, and very likely not the last. Nonetheless, she surrendered to my macho idiocy.
The four runners crossed the road and onto our block. The two in the lead saw us in the way. Their brows wrinkled.
Uh-huh, I said to myself, I know you see me. I ain’t movin’, either.
The six of us met in front of the Atlantic Sands Oceanfront Hotel.
“Excuse us, sir,” one of the lead men said.
I didn’t move.
“You guys are supposed to be on the boardwalk with the rest of the beautiful people,” I said. “Sidewalk’s ours.”
My wife poked me in the ribs with an elbow. I ignored her.
“Our apologies, sir,” the other lead man said.
Our apologies? I thought. Oh yeah, these guys are SO intimidated by me.
Another poke by my wife. Harder.
“Sheesh,” I said, “I know city folk don’t care about manners and all, but you guys take the cake. You think you–
(poke poke POKE)
–can waltz around anywhere you want!”
(POKE POKE POKE POKE)
“What?” I whispered to my wife. “I have some manly mojo going on here.”
She ignored me. Her eyes were instead fixed on the T shirts of the men in front of us. The blue ones. With the fancy emblems.
I then realized two things. One was that there was another, very unique military base not too far from where we were standing called Naval Amphibious Base, Little Creek. The other was that the fancy emblems on the shirts of those four men said “U.S. Naval Special Warfare.”
I was picking a fight with four Navy SEALs.
My manly mojo drained along with the color from my face.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” the first man said again. “We just like to run out here because there aren’t many folks out this time of morning. We like to keep a quick pace, and that isn’t always easy with all the people on the boardwalk.”
I tried speaking, but all that came out was “Whhh…” I cleared my very dry throat and tried again. “Oh…well, um…good. That’s just…real good.”
“We appreciate that, sir,” he said, then shook my hand. When he did, I noticed the tattoo on his forearm. Written in old script beneath a sword was written, “Isaiah 6:8.”
“Hooyah,” I said.
“Hooyah,” he smile and answered. And off they went.
I didn’t say much on the way back to the hotel, and my wife was kind enough not to say much, either.
I wasn’t thinking about the nasty taste left over from having my foot in my mouth. I was thinking about the scripture tattooed on that Frogman’s arm. Isaiah 6:8. There are other verses in the Bible that carry more meaning for me, but that verse has always been my favorite.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
For four days I relaxed in the sun and the sand, staying up late and sleeping in with little worries and few cares. Yet around me all week were people who dedicated themselves to nothing more than ensuring I could do just that. Rest. Without worry or care. Because they manned the walls and filled the breaches. Men and women who flew the Blackhawks and the fighters, who rose before the sun to run the beaches, who stood watch on the ships so we could sleep in peace.
They endure and train and fight. They are separated from families and loved ones. They live under the constant threat of mortal danger.
Not because they must. Because they choose.
Because each of them said, “Don’t send him. Don’t send her. Send me.”
All will wash away
June 17, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 33 Comments
Using the setting sun as my compass, I skirt the incoming tide and pause every few steps to snatch a stray shell before the retreating waves can steal it away. My toes dig into the wet sand as the pipers and gulls flutter around me, searching for one last snack before finally calling their day done.
This will be my last evening at the beach. Sometime early Thursday morning we will brush the sand from our clothes, pack our suitcases, and head west for home. (A secret, though, between you and me: I’m not shaking my sand off. I want to walk around with it on me a little while longer.) So tonight I am enjoying one last walk to take it all in.
And I’m not the only one. A few yards in front of me is a young surfer just out of the water and taking the long way home.
He places his board down just beyond the surf and bends as if tying an imaginary shoe. He slowly traces something into the wet sand with a finger and, still stooping, considers the marks. A slow and solemn nod displays his approval, then he rises and walks on.
So do I, pausing after a few steps to pick up a clam shell for my daughter. I look back up to see the surfer now heading for dry sand and the boardwalk, where a battered red bicycle waits to take him home. Curious, I walk ahead to the spot where he had bent down and find these four words:
ALL WILL WASH AWAY.
I look over and see him climb onto the bike and tuck his surfboard under his right arm. There he sits, staring out at the beach.
And here I stand, staring down at these profound words.
You don’t generally expect such deep thinking from hip surfer dudes, just as you don’t generally expect it from redneck hicks. In that, we are kindred spirits. And in more, too.
Because these past few days have brought much the same sentiment from me. I’ve been coming here since I was a child, and that sense of permanence has always been a source of comfort. The ocean never changes. It is immense and beautiful and old and will always be such. Yet while it is fixed, I am not. I may visit this same place every summer, but I always bring along a different me.
The me this year is much different than the person who last gazed upon these waters, though exactly how different I cannot say. Rather than time dulling the edges of our lives, I think it sharpens them. It makes clearer the things that matter and the things that do not. Perhaps it is because my visit this year falls just a few weeks shy of my birthday that my thoughts have been centered more upon the future than the present. Thoughts that are best summed in the four words below me.
ALL WILL WASH AWAY.
There are times when life becomes simply unbearable for me, when the tides crash in much more than ease out and the treasures life gives me are snatched away and demanded back. And I’m sure I’m not alone. I have a feeling the young man on the red bike has recently suffered through something like that. I have a feeling you have suffered through that as well. Because we all have things in our lives that scare us and leave us to quake at the possibility that we are to merely borrow them for a time instead of holding them forever.
We all fear that all we love will be consumed by the enormity of this world and erased forever.
Yet still we arrive daily in our lives to write upon the shore, to cast our hearts and our hopes into the ebb and flow of our days in faith that we just may happen upon something that neither time nor tides can erase.
That is our quest in life. To find the eternal. To find that which cannot be washed away.
Where tears go to die
June 15, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 45 Comments
I’m sitting on the balcony of our eighth-floor hotel room on a quiet Monday evening. The Atlantic stretches out below me like God’s welcome mat. A soft breeze kisses my face and leaves behind a salty film I desperately hope will never completely wash off.
I’ve abandoned my laptop for old fashioned paper and pen. On the small table in front of me is a rare indulgence of Hemmingway’s beverage of choice, and in my left hand is an even rarer indulgence of a long-forgotten vice: a very nice cigar. Bob Marley is singing “No Woman, No Cry” to me through the earphones on my head, and I lean back in my faded jeans and rest my bare feet against the wall.
This is what the ocean does to me.
It makes me smile, makes me relax. Makes me temporarily suspend my fears and regrets. It replaces the storms of my life with sunshine and the filthy mud with clean sand. And all those nagging cares that wash over me are silenced by the peaceful sound of waves meeting shore.
Here, I am a better me.
But this is not why I come here every year. Not why for one week out of fifty-two I say goodbye to my mountains to seek a distant shore.
If you really want to know why I make this pilgrimage, all you need to do is look at the old man in the bench eight stories below me. Sitting right there on the boardwalk, staring out to sea.
I flirted with the idea of taking a picture of him, if only so you could see what I’m seeing right now. But I can’t. It seems like an invasion of his privacy, a sacrilege to his holy moment. So instead I snap a picture of what he’s been looking at for the last six hours.
Yes, that’s right. Six hours.
We first passed him on our way out to the beach, loaded down with shovels and pails and chairs and towels. Seventies and tired, with a worn cane propped against his right leg. He stared out to the horizon with a soft smile on his lips. It looked to me that he was both there and somewhere far away.
When we passed him on our way back in for lunch, I nodded. He smiled. I nodded on our way back out afterward and got a wave.
Then, as we were calling it a day, I passed and said, “Pretty weather, huh?”
“Sure is,” he answered.
Sometimes having kids gives you opportunities you would otherwise miss. When my son began crying over a missing toy that he was sure would be swallowed by the sea overnight, I went back down to the beach to retrieve it for him. Another wave, another smile. On my way back, I decided to stop.
“Not much beats this view,” I said.
“Come here every day,” he replied. “It’s the only place where the scenery never changes but always gets better anyway.”
I liked that enough to stick around and hear more.
“You and your family from around here?” he asked.
“No, we’re on the other side of Richmond,” I said.
He nodded. “Nice country up there.”
“Beautiful country,” I told him. “But not like this.”
“My wife and I moved here from Iowa,” he said. “Came here, oh, twenty years ago. We retired and realized we’d never seen the ocean. Our kids were grown and gone, so we figured it was the right time.”
His wife wasn’t with him, and I wasn’t about to ask where she was. I knew. I knew by the way he had sat on only one side of the bench rather than the middle. Knew by the fact that he rested his cane against his right leg even though he was right handed. It was the product of repetition. Someone else had shared that seat with him for twenty years.
“Know why I come here?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Because the ocean swallows our tears. That’s what she always told me. ‘Harry,’ she’d say, ‘I think all that is all the tears we shed. God just bottles them up and pours them out so we can have a place to visit where we can leave our struggles.’”
“I like that,” I said.
“Me, too.”
I left him to his pouring, and then I went up to my room and onto the balcony to do the same. Because that’s what the ocean is to Harry and I. A place to pour out our tears and leave our struggles. A place to find the better us.
I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
Don't miss anything: Subscribe now-
You can catch up with me here:
-
