Things You Will Remember

You will remember a little house by the bay, and all the life it witnessed.

You imagine your grandfather, younger than you ever knew him, even younger than you are now, building the house. You don’t know what that entails, not really, but in your imagination, he wields saw and hammer and nail with practiced ease. He pauses to lean against the large tree and tries to think of what this place will mean to him. He cannot possibly know. Does he know that his children will play here in the summers; will paddle out to an island long swallowed by the river before their own children are born? You imagine your mother as a child, standing on that vanished earth, caught up in her own stories and adventures. She is watching the house be carried away too, now.

You will remember, like a grainy fragment of a dream, the sandpipers dancing up to the edges of the water, so close, nearly touching...then leaping away. Daring the water to catch them. You remember your father showing you how to do the same, to watch the waves, to not care about the rain, to laugh at how you and a bird could have so much in common.

You will remember a childhood here; dueling your brothers with wooden swords cast up from the water, swimming with one eye open for your jellyfish nemeses, watching Baltimore and Annapolis shoot their fireworks into the not-so-distant skies, scrambling over rocks on epic quests, parties and games and talking, and the quiet walks to get away from them all.

You will remember a chair, and a book, and it will have to stand for all the chairs and all the books, all the times you devoured stories here, safe and protected by the white noise of the water breathing in and out, dulling all other sounds to nothing. You’ve always needed that chair, and those books, to quiet the thoughts in your head, to give them shape when they scatter, and respite when they boil.

You will remember that stretch of sand, and the strange things that lived there. Seagulls, floating above like kites. Snakes swaying through the water in the distance, terrified of being seen. Horseshoe crabs, upended and struggling, waiting for you to flip them over and watch, like an anxious parent, as they beat against the water to return.

You will remember the destruction Isabel brought to your sanctuary, how she ripped the wooden steps from the earth itself, how she lifted an entire boat from the sand and tossed it into a yard. You will never forget the feeling it showed you - that things can change, that even the earth beneath your feet is not solid, that something that was good and real can one day be different, or gone entirely.

You do not realize it yet, but the jetties - those walls of plywood and barnacled stone - have been poisoned. They will slowly die for years, and the beach will erode with them. The wreckage will be cleared away, and the community will come together again.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember your grandmother’s dinners, and her long winding tales, and her army of nutcracker soldiers who emerged from their bunkers in the house’s walls and lined up along the staircase. You will remember your grandfather, the captain of his boat, and all the adventures he took you all on. The lurch in your stomach when it hit a wave and lifted. The fear that your tube would escape the wake and toss you into the water - and the small part of you that wanted to be pitched over. Your family, together, doing something just for the sheer pleasure of the sun on your face, the wind tangling your hair, the spray of the water kissing your arms and legs.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember sneaking off into the bamboo with your first love, giddy and breathless. Weeks later, your friends all lined up on the jetties, even then decaying, but still strong enough to support them all. You still have that picture. Most of them are gone from your life now, but not all. Mostly, you will look at yourself then, sixteen, perched at the precipice of a new phase of life, and shake your head at all the mistakes and joys ahead of him.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember your grandparents here, always, even after they are gone. They turned this place into a home, formed their own friendships here. There were birthdays, parties, games of chicken-foot, Christmas trees, countless meals, laughs, and stories. You imagine them walking the streets in the spring light, waving to neighbors and brave birds, being a part of something.

You will remember them dying here, but it is not a memory that takes up much space. When you think of them, it is not them quiet and thin and distant in their beds. You think of them laughing at a dinner table, or behind the wheel of the boat, or sitting on a chair at the beach. You hope that they would be happy with the home you’ve made here, with the care your family has given it, here in its final days with us. Even if it is changed irreparably into something else, or broken down, it had some beautiful final years. You hope they felt the same way about their own lives.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember, maybe more than everything else, the two and a half years you called that place your home. You loved the place before, but now it was yours in a way that it would never be anyone else’s. You experienced so much there, so many stories, both others’ and your own. Long talks with friends over beers. Editing your novel on the dinner table, looking out at a bright blue and green outside. Dancing alone to your favorite songs. Talking to yourself, pacing through the house, speaking aloud your ideas, your burgeoning tales and narrative structures. A life on your own, for the first time.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember the parties you hosted there, where you gathered your friends from disparate groups and brought them together for all of your favorite things. You showed them what it was like to stand at the edge of water in the darkness, lit only by a small fire, half hoping that something massive and otherworldly would rise up from the waves. Some images will remain in your memory. That birthday you spent in a haze of gratitude for having these people in your life. Everyone in costume as their own characters, preparing for the Renaissance Fair. Your elaborate Murder Mystery Party, with a professional photographer, delicious food, and entirely too much gin. The morning after that, with all your friends on the futon, all together in one place.

Photo Credit: Raquel the Photographer

You will wonder if this is that part of being human that many of us have forgotten. Community. A found family. A realization that life is not meant to be lived in silos, fighting for status or for uninterrupted entertainment, but with others in community and solidarity. The house brought you to this conclusion, but afterwards, it would begin to seem all the sadder when empty, or filled only with you. Maybe this was its way of letting you move on, helping you when you needed it, and pushing you out, not unkindly, when it was time to go.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember how much you looked forwards to those weekends with her, just for the sheer joy of living through a lazy day, a regular life, with her there. Cooking eggs and watching movies and playing games. The simple molecules that make up your life, all of them made so much better with her to share them. Leaving here was not so bad, if it meant a life staying with her.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember the darker times here. That November night when you couldn’t sleep, heart pounding, tears falling, fearing the darkness come to upend your narrative of the world. The nights you felt hopeless and powerless, and retreated inward into stories. Some of them reached you deeper than others, and they will always live in this house, in the version of it you build every time you remember.

And they have not fixed the jetties.

You will remember the sickening realization that strangers are judging this place and might decide to destroy it all. You’ve seen it happen - quiet, old, beautiful homes demolished in a night to be replaced by gaudy monstrosities. In those long months when you know the end is coming, you walk through the neighborhood and marvel at the wealth here. How are you so lucky? In this world, having access to a place like this is staggering. You will try to hold that thought tightly. The sheer gratitude that you ever had it to begin with, always mixed with guilt and anger at a world that would deny this to so many.

You will remember walking on the beach the last night before the house went on the market. The lap of the waves like your own breathing, slow, deliberate. The familiar sink of the cold sand. The smells of salt and earth.

And something new and strange.

A crane, looming in the darkness, and the tall wooden beams stretched out into the water like ribs. And you will laugh at what this means.

They are fixing the jetties.

This place will be swallowed by the water, eventually. Even now, you think of what’s coming for the world, of rising tides and storms far worse than Isabel. The beach may not survive your lifetime. But now it has years left, years it wasn’t supposed to have. And that is some small comfort.

You will leave this place, one day soon, and someone else will have it. You will likely come back, to stand on that sand again, to imagine more stories, to read more books, even if your old home is barred from you. Because more than the place you grew up, more than the house your grandfather built, your home is here, on this beach. And even it will drown, one day.

But they are fixing the jetties.