Beach read

“Can it be?” he said. “Is that my darling daughter? Pirate queen of the open seas?”

They’d both run to me, squeezed me, and I’d started to cry, like I could only fully comprehend how badly I’d been missing them now that we were together.

I felt broken anew right now, and I wanted my parents. I wanted to sit on the couch between them, Mom’s fingers in my hair, and tell them I’d messed up. That I’d fallen in love with someone who’d done everything he could to warn me not to.

That I’d let myself go broke. That my life was falling apart, and I had no idea how to fix it. That my heart was more broken than it had ever been and I was scared I couldn’t fix it.

I gripped the notebook paper in my hands tightly and blinked back the tears enough to start reading in earnest.

The letter, like the envelope, was dated for my twenty-ninth birthday—January thirteenth, a solid seven months after Dad had died, which made everything about this feel dreamy and surreal as I started to read.

Dear January,

Usually, though not always, I write these letters on your birthday, but your twenty-ninth is still a long ways off, and I want to be ready to give this, and all the other letters, to you then. So I’m starting early this year.

This one contains an apology, and I hate to give you a reason to hate me just before we celebrate your birth, but I’m trying to be brave. Sometimes I worry the truth can’t be worth the pain it causes. In a perfect world, you would never know about my mistakes. Or rather, I wouldn’t have made them to begin with.

But of course I have, and I’ve spent years going back and forth on what to tell you. I keep coming back to the fact that I want you to know me. This might sound selfish, and it is. But it isn’t only selfish, January. If and when the truth comes out, I don’t want it to rock you. I want you to know that bigger than my mistakes, bigger than anything good or bad I’ve ever done, and most completely unwavering has been my love for you.

I’m afraid what the truth will do to you. I’m afraid you won’t be able to love me as I am. But your mother had the chance to make that decision for herself, and you deserve that too.

1401 Queen’s Beach Lane. The safe. The best day of my life.

I ran up the stairs and thundered into the master bedroom. The tablecloth was still tucked up under the clock to reveal the safe. My heart was pounding. I needed to be right this time. I thought my body might crack in half from the weight on my chest, if I wasn’t. I typed in the number, the same one scrawled in the top right corner of the letter. My birthday. The lights flickered green and the lock clicked.

There were two things in the safe: a thick stack of envelopes, wrapped in an oversized green rubber band, and a key on a blue PVC key chain. In white letters, the words SWEET HARBOR MARINA, NORTH BEAR SHORES, MI were printed across the surface.

I pulled the stack of letters out first and stared at them. My name was written on each, in a variety of pens, the handwriting getting sharper and more resolute the further back I flipped. I clutched the envelopes to my chest as a sob broke out of me. He had touched these.

I’d forgotten that about the house, somewhere along the way. But this was different. This was my name, a piece of him he’d carved out and left behind for me.

And I knew I could survive reading them because of everything else I’d survived. I could stare it all in the face. I staggered to my feet and grabbed my keys on the way out the door.

My phone’s GPS found the marina with no trouble. It was four minutes away. Two turns and then I was in the dark parking lot. There were two other cars, probably employees’, but as I walked down the dock, no one rushed out to shoo me away. I was alone, with the quiet sloshing of the water against the dock’s supports, the gentle thunk and shpp of boats rocking into the wood.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew that I was looking. I held the letters tightly in my hand as I moved down the length of the dock, up and down the off-shooting pathways.

And then there it was, pure white and lettered in blue, its sails rolled up. January.

I climbed unsteadily onto it. Sat on the bench and stared out at the water.

“Dad,” I whispered.

I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I believed about the afterlife, but I thought about time and imagined flattening it out so that every moment in this space became one. I could almost hear his voice. I could almost feel him touching my shoulder.

I felt so lost again. Every time I started to find my way, I seemed to slip further down. How could I trust what Gus and I had? How could I trust my own feelings? People were complicated. They weren’t math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck. The world was complicated too, not a beautifully hazy French film, but a disastrous, horrible mess, speckled with brilliance and love and meaning.

A breeze ruffled the letters in my lap. I brushed the hair from my teary eyes and opened the first envelope.

Dear January,

Today you were born. I knew to expect that for months. It was not a surprise. Your mother and I wanted you very much, even before you began to exist.

What I didn’t know to expect is that today, I would feel like I’d been born too.

You have made me a new person: January’s father. And I know this is who I will be for the rest of my life. I’m looking at you now, January, as I’m writing this, and I can barely get the words onto the page.

I am in shock, January. I didn’t know I could be this person. I didn’t know I could feel all this. I can’t believe someday you will wear a backpack, know how to hold a pencil, have opinions on how you like to wear your hair. I’m looking at you and I can’t believe you are going to become more amazing than you already are.

Ten fingers. Ten toes. And even if you had none of them, you’d still be the grandest thing I’ve ever seen.

I can’t explain it. Do you feel it? Now that you’re old enough to read this, and to know who you are, do you have a word for the thing that evades me? The thing that makes you different from anything else?

I guess I should tell you something about myself, about who I am at this very moment as I watch you sleep on your mother’s chest.

Well, nice to meet you, January. I’m your father, the man you made from nothing but your tiny fingers and toes.

ONE FOR EVERY year, always written on the day.

January, today you are one. Who am I today, January? I’m the hand that guides you while you take your clumsy steps. Today, your mother and I made spaghetti, so I guess you could say I’m a chef too. Your personal one. I never used to like to cook much, but it has to be done.

_____

Happy second birthday, January. Your hair has gotten so much darker. You wouldn’t remember being a blonde, would you? I like it more this way. It suits you very much. Your mother says you look like her grandmother, but I think you take after my mother. She would have loved you. I’ll try to tell you a bit about her too. She was from a place called North Bear Shores. That’s where I’m from too. I lived there when I was your age. I was a nasty two-year-old, she used to tell me. I guess I screamed until I passed out. But that was probably at least in part due to Randy, my oldest brother. A bit of a jackass, but a lovable one. He lives in Hong Kong now, because he is Fancy.

_____

January, I can’t believe you’re four. You are person-shaped now. I suppose you always were, but you’re more so now than ever. When I was four, I wrecked my tricycle. I was riding down a pier toward the lighthouse at the end. My mother had gotten distracted by a friend and I thought it would be neat to ride right off the pier, see if I was going fast enough to stay atop the water. Like Road Ru

We felt so bad. Sometimes, January, being a parent feels like being a kid who someone has mistakenly handed another kid. “Good luck!” this unwise stranger cries before turning his back on you forever. We will always make mistakes, I’m afraid. I hope they will get smaller and smaller as we get bigger and bigger. Older, really; we’re rather done growing.

_____

Eight! Eight years old and smart as a whip! You never stop reading, January. I hated reading when I was eight, but then again, I was terrible at it, and both Randy and Douglas used to tease me mercilessly, though these days Douglas is as gentle as a butterfly. I imagine if I’d been better at reading, I would have liked it more. Or maybe vice versa. My dad was a busy man but he was the one who taught me how to read, January. And since he’d started, I wouldn’t let my poor mother have anything to do with it. Well, when the time comes, I’m teaching you to drive, she used to tell me. Your favorite book right now is The Giving Tree, but God, January, that book breaks my heart. Your mother is a bit like that tree and I worry you will be too. Don’t get me wrong. That’s a good way to be. But still. I wish you could be a bit stonier, like your old pop. Only for your own good.

You know, when I was eight, I shoplifted for the first time. Not condoning it, of course, but the goal of this is honesty. I stole gum from the old-fashioned candy store on the main drag in North Bear Shores. I loved that shop. They had these great big fans to keep the chocolate from melting in the summer, and on days when my mother was occupied, my brothers and I would stroll down there to get out of the heat. I never found it much fun to go to the beach on my own. Perhaps now I’d feel different. I haven’t been in a while. Your mother and I have been talking about taking you soon.

_____

January, you are thirteen and braver than any thirteen-year-old should have to be. Today, I don’t know who I am. I am your father still, of course. And the husband of your mother. But January, sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take. I am lost, January. Remember that lighthouse I told you about? I think I told you about it. Sometimes I think about you as that lighthouse. Keep your eyes on January, I tell myself. She won’t lead you astray. If you focus on January, you won’t go too far off course. But maybe I was so focused I ran smack dab into you.