by the sea

I did not see the ocean until I was in my mid thirties and we stopped at Daytona beach.

I was enraptured by the tide that crept in that night, the idea that something so large could move in the moonlight with such fluid grace amazed me.

I was both frightened and awed by the thoughts of what lived in that great body of seemingly endless water and stung by something I saw but did not even know was an animal, a green ring that  turned out to be a jellyfish.

All of my children were enthralled by this phenomena too, but one of them was marked as a water baby come home.

Yesterday he introduced his children to the ocean on the other side of this huge country and a life long yearning came into being.  From now on he will live by the sea, by the beautiful sea . . .