"Impressions from Ocean City"

At night the beach is quiet and the moon is full. I am sitting on the sand. I imagine that this beach is a stage. The yellow moon shines a spotlight on me. In its gentle glow, my soul becomes fluid. Now it is free to rise and fall in the rythmn of the waves.
Here I don’t feel imprisoned by the things in my life I cannot change. This beach is a place for the imagination and my soul is free riding the waves.
My father is far off down the beach walking towards me. I cannot decide whether to meet him halfway. The decision feels larger than the ocean before me. My soul is being pulled from the water and I am sad, as if something has been lost forever.
I walk to meet him. This way I have a little control. I won’t allow him to come to me. It’s as if I’m saying, “I see you coming to me. But I won’t sit back and let the events around me determine my fate. I can take charge.”
When my father is five feet from me, I again have another decision to make. I feel annoyed by this indecision. If I had more confidence, I would blurt things out, embraced by my surroundings like a pebble pulled by the current in a clear stream. But I don’t have that ability, and right now I am stuck, no more able to avoid this decision than a fly caught in a spider’s web can wring himself free.
I say “hi” first. My father asks if I’ve noticed the sailboats coming closer on the water like small birds riding the crest of a wave. I say that I saw them and I ask him what it means.
“Why are they sailing so close here?” he asks. His brow is wrinkled. He is confused. He has misinterpreted my meaning. I only wanted to know how this image of white sailboats on the rough bluish waters strikes him.
“I’ve never seen sailboats in Ocean City,” he says.
He couldn’t answer my question, and I am tired like a pianist whose hit the wrong key again and again. I close my eyes and feel the cool breeze on my cheek and the wind tossing my hair. I can hear the sound of the water rushing and seagulls in the distance, and although my eyes are closed, I can see perfectly how the driftwood beaten by the water must look as it floats close to the shore.
The water comes rushing in, and at its edge is a white foam. Then it retreats back to its source and the foam remains in the shape of an arc on the sand. Watching this scene, I realize how true is the old saying that most things in life prefer to go home.
But the white foam is like a rebel. It is a part of the water, and then it disengages itself and stays behind making an imprint in the sand.
My father is waiting to go. I am sad to leave, and I try to figure out why this experience feels so beautiful.
Maybe I love the way the yellow moon in the night sky is reflecting light on the water. Or do I enjoy sharing this moment with my father? I wonder why the two are separate things. I long for my father to be like the light coming from the moon, soft and gentle, yet strong and trustworthy and knowing the way things are supposed to be.
But maybe that is not doable. He has his opinion, and I am alone in this moment, letting the view melt into me like chocolate over a warm yellow cake.
Inside of me, if I reach far enough, I can find strength. Although I walk alone, I believe that I am being moved along by the hands of people holding up my body. It is perhaps the way a caterpillar moves along the ground, inch by inch.
My father is standing there, and the moon is shining on him, making his features stand out. I see the stubble of his unshaved face and the small band-aid on his temple where he had a recent procedure to remove skin cancer.
I wish I had mind-reading powers and could know how he feels in this moment, what he sees when he looks at that moon. Nonetheless I know it is beautiful anyway, father and daughter watching the moon together. Maybe when he dies or even just when I move away, moments like this will comfort me.
Memories change with the passage of time, which makes little rivulets in the mind like the little rivulets the water makes in a well-traveled stream.
If I could paint, I would put this image on paper and then I’d always have a picture of the way I see it now.