I don't remember much about my father, he wasn't around often when I was younger. There was only one time in my life that I can recall anything about him and that was one special time, when he came on my 4th birthday. My memory is foggy of the exact events but I remember the smile on my mother's face every time she would look at him, the warming feeling I would get when he spoke, and the his sparkling green eyes, the ones my brother and I inherited from him. He had to leave quickly, couldn't stay for too long, but before he left, my father handed me what seemed to be a sea shell shaped box. Opening it up, I found a beautiful creamy blue colored pearl necklace, his gift to me. He then picked me up taking me into his arms and pulled back my tiny bangs to gently press a kiss on my forehead,
"Happy Birthday Whitney."
I never saw him again after that day. I only heard of him through the stories mother would tell me before I went to sleep. Stories of her first meeting him as she was sailing on day. He was swimming quite far from the shore when he accidentally got stuck in one of mother's fishing nets. She said it was quite the careless mistake but still helped cut him loose. They chat on her boat a little while before he went back to his swimming. Mother told me that after that day, they would meet by the shore line and talk about many things, especially the sea. Mother loved the sea, especially all its mysterious. I remember asking her why she and him never got married. A sad smile would appear on her face as she would take me into her arms and answer,
"People wouldn't understand."
It was a strange answer, people got married all the time and no one has ever had an issue with it before. What was there not to understand about my parents wanting to get married? Mother just said it was complicated and left it at that. After my brother was born, I grew even more curious about who my father was and why he never stuck around. I began to ask my questions as well. "One day, you will get to meet him" She finally promised, "But not now, you are too young."
I wasn't happy with the answer and as the young child I was, I began making up my own farfetched stories about him. I would think that he lived in a beautiful home under the sea, where everyday he would wake up to rainbows of colorful fish swimming around, greeting him with happy smiles everywhere he went. And I believed that the reason he never visited us, was because he didn't want to leave his beautiful home for this olde dull place, people bothered to call a town. That was my story and I stuck to it.
Every evening I would go out to the shoreline and walk along the wet sand, just like how mother said she did in her stories, I would glance out to sea and watch the lighthouse illuminate the water as I waited. As a kid I always believed if I did just that then I would get to meet my father. It was a foolish idea of course, but I believed it. Eventually I stopped because it just seemed hopeless and rather boring, waiting for no one.
When I entered school I did find it hard to make friends. Many of the other children thought of me as strange or abnormal. They didn't seem to understand my obsession with the sea and the creatures living in it. Of course, how could one not find such things fascinating? I mean we do live in a town right by the ocean, they have to have some ounce of curiosity about its many wonders. Sadily no, unlike my family, everyone else was too busy to indulge in the wonders of the ocean and only really say the beach as a place to attract tourists. Much like my mother's shop. She would sell wonderful pearls and trinkets made of the things she would find exploring the caves under the cliff or catch out at sea on her glass bottom boat. It was a very popular shop amongst outside visitors, they say it's because of the unique air the shop has from the rest of the town, but I digress.
Attending school, I found that other's did not find my stories about my family as amusing as me and my baby brother did. The teacher's should shake their heads in disapproval as I would draw pictures of underwater homes and people living in them, claiming it to be where my father lives. Mother was called in constantly to talk about my "behavior". Of course I didn't understand it at the time, but people just didn't like anything different in our town. All the other children drew pictures of the normal families, living in normal homes, doing normal things. I found them rather boring. But I could clearly see the displeasure in my teacher's face whenever I mentioned anything about my fantasies, so i learned to keep them to myself and leave the best drawings at home.
