I need the sea because it teaches me

                                       – Pablo Neruda

Dear Readers:  Here are three essays from a book in progress, tentatively titled “Water Whispers: Simple Life Lessons from the Sea”. Feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts and experiences.

  And, as always, thanks for reading.

Sincerely, Ken

See past your fears

    We see it first in the distance, far out to sea, as far as a child’s eyes can see from the shore of this desolate island off the coast of Malaysia, a thin thread, upright, moving toward shore like a loopy periscope. The periscope bends and sways as if passing through its own private breezes. We stand on the beach, a knot of walnut-brown kids on a camping trip, the lot of us squinting, shouting and hopping up and down, trying to get a better look at this mirage floating across a vast plain of sea blasted by sunshine.

  It is 1966. I am seven years old. It is a simple time.

  Along the beach palms and pines click and whisper. Monkeys scream in the trees. Maybe they’re appraising the necklace they snatched this morning from someone’s overdressed mom. 

Behind our sandy camp there is jungle where we are told not to go, but we do. The island is a wild, unblemished place, full of surprise. Who could let that lie?

   The form on the water teases us. It seems to neither gain distance nor lose it, like some galloping horseman forever pinned to the horizon. Of course the featureless sea only makes this seem so.

   Soon enough an older boy whispers, “Cobra.”

   I suppose some of the kids feel fear, a jolt maybe, and then the sort of cold leaking that follows the first footfall announcing an intruder in the house. But I have to make this up because I have no idea. The whispered cobra fills me with heart-hammering joy. At home I have dog-eared books on snakes and snakes in pungent jars; lovingly brushed free of ants, washed in the sink when no one is looking, pulled from their jars again and again for the thrill of their satin feel and dinosaur look.

   The cobra is not teasing us anymore. It’s heading directly toward the spot where we stand, moving now with impossible speed, as if sliding across glass, its serpentine outline now as clear and bold as the midday sand burning the bottoms of our feet. Someone says “Mommy”, because in the end it’s no secret who children turn to. Dimly I hear the sound of sand scattering, the small grunts of some of us running.

   I take a few steps back from the water’s edge, but I don’t run. An odd tingling wraps my body and turns me light-headed. The kids running back to summon the adults are thinking Danger. I feel as if Santa Claus just took my hand.

   Just like that the cobra is among the small emerald waves. With deft timing it rides a wave’s foamy rush onto the sand.

   The world stops, and when it reaches the dry sand so does the cobra. It rests, a thick, dark rope of gleaming coils longer than a man. I am so close I see the rise and collapse of its sides, the dark scales moving from shimmer to shadow. It is beauty I only recognize in the way it pins my feet.

  And then, blink, the cobra is moving fast up the beach toward the jungle, its sinuous whippings throwing sand. A snake senses the vibration of footfalls long before we do.  I hear noises behind me and an adult bark of command, and when I turn I see the empty beach is ruined by adults. At their front, three khaki-clad men carry the trunk of a dead palm. There is much shouting, because this is what adults do when they are unsure of themselves.

  To a child’s eye the trunk appears thick as a trash can and nearly tall as the men, but looking back, it couldn’t have been that big, for the men make their way across the sand faster than the cobra can, and when they reach the fleeing snake, only one man grasps the end of the trunk like a baseball bat, bringing it down on the snake again and again. It is hard to kill a writhing snake in soft sand, but he does.

   The men bury the cobra in an enormous pit, squared precisely at the corners, and we are warned to stay away. One man tells us cobras retain their reflexes long after death. Be afraid, he says, though he does not explain how the snake will rise up through six feet of earth to bite us.

  That night, the adults away in the mess tent doing adult things, I slip from my tent. I go and sit beside the grave. Something heavy sits in my stomach. The palms click and the pines whisper. I think it is the sea breeze that chills me.

   I’m afraid, but it’s not the snake I fear.

Find happiness where you can

   Tucked within the protected confines of Nantucket Sound, Quohog Beach is a beach for young children. As if attempting to make things pleasant for its primary patrons, everything about Quohog Beach is small, from its wee crescent of sand to the pint-size jetty jutting like a blunt thumb into the Sound.

   At the moment we are consumed with the beach. We scour the sand, buckets swinging, poking through a tangle of seaweed, broken bits of whelk and moon snail, searching beneath a cloudless blue July sky for pieces of horseshoe crab. These prehistoric creatures once littered Cape Cod in such numbers that they were ground up and used as fertilizer by farmers. From what we observe on the sand their numbers haven’t decreased much, though each crab appears to have been placed atop a firecracker and then scattered by a schizophrenic wind.

  No matter. Our plan remains straightforward. We will piece together a horseshoe crab, whole and complete. Cullen and Graham raptly pluck up cracker-thin crab bits, placing each one gently in their bucket. I follow their example, but with slightly less enthusiasm. I understand the odds. I glance at other parents, flat on their backs in the hot sun.

   At six, Cullen runs things. He waves a magisterial hand at his four-year-old brother.

   “If we don’t get enough pieces to put together the crab now,” he decrees, “we’ll get the rest later.”

   “Uh-huh,” grunts Graham, possibly because he mildly resents being bossed around, possibly because he is sorely bent to one side under the weight of a bucket spilling over with pretty much everything he could pick up.

   Cullen strides over to his brother’s bucket, peers in and scowls.

   “Crabs aren’t made out of beer cans!”

     I wish the beer can was full. My head has been cocked to the sand for two hours. The back of my neck feels like it’s been kicked by a Clydesdale.

   Perhaps I slip into sudsy daydream. Cullen looks at us both and harrumphs.

   “Am I going to have to do this all by myself?”

   We collect jigsaw pieces for another thirty minutes. Not thirty-one minutes, not thirty-two. Any parent of small children understands exactitude. I can’t go a minute longer. I find an excuse called lunch.

   The three of us walk up the path to the cottage where we are staying for the week, buckets bumping.

   “I think we have the pieces we need,” says Cullen.

   “Right,” says Graham.

   He is too young for sarcasm.

   We march through the front door and continue, as quickly as possible, on through the kitchen, where Kathy is fixing everyone lunch. We are not quick enough.

  “You’d better wash whatever that is off their hands,” says Kathy.

   I stand in the bathroom, watching Cullen turn a white hand towel black. I may be less attentive the second son around. Eating lunch I notice Graham has something shiny and snail-like on his index finger. I say a silent prayer and he answers it by licking it off.

   That night Kathy and I lay in bed. Our sliding screen door opens to the porch. Occasionally a puff of wind brings a smell that makes me wonder if Stephen King is cooking something just outside. Beneath the stars dark shells lay methodically sorted, according to what I don’t know.

   “Phew,” I say.

   “Maybe you could put them in the yard,” Kathy says, but I know she doesn’t really mean it because she’s smiling as if we’re lying downwind from a potpourri factory.

   “Don’t worry,” I say. “Another six months and it’ll be a wrap.”

   “Anything is possible,” my beautiful bride says to me, and I know why I married her.

   The following morning we redirect slightly.

   “I want to crab,” says Graham.

   Cullen gives a magisterial nod.

   “Let’s,” he says.  

   We have become fascinated with crabbing because frankly nothing, with the possible exception of King Henry VIII, eats with more gusto than crabs do. Also live crabs do more interesting things than dead ones. The small jetty pronging off Quohog Beach is loaded with crabs. We know this because on this, the fourth day of our vacation, we have already been crabbing roughly two thousand times.

   We retrieve our buckets from the porch. Before we go, Cullen crouches to arrange a few promising horseshoe pieces.

   “Hmmm,” he says, moving the pieces in circles like a centrifugal chess master.

   “Hmmm,” says his brother, who at this juncture in time still admires him greatly.

   Cullen finishes placing the bits in their proper places. There is something resembling a horseshoe crab body, but there are still great gaps occupied by cedar composite decking.

  “There,” says Cullen.

   What I see resembles a horse dropping after the Kentucky Derby field has run through it.

   Cullen looks to Graham.

  “Just a few more pieces,” he says.

   “Hmmmm,” says Graham.     

    Small children wake well before the most conscientious rooster and even earlier on vacation. The world is gray. The light isn’t even up yet. The air is still damp with sea. The beach is empty.

   We each carry our own bucket, chicken bits and string inside. I step gingerly along the jetty. The enormous rocks, sectioned in some distant quarry, are liberally colonized by barnacles that jab at the soles of my feet.

   Cullen and Graham walk as if strolling across shag carpet. When I reach the end of the jetty Cullen is already crouched, peering into his chosen crevice.

   “Breakfast time,” says Cullen, “but not for us.”

    Graham is flat on his stomach, his face and the majority of his torso in his crevice of choice.

   “What do you see?” I ask.

   “I dropped my string.”

    After I retrieve it, I tie a chicken piece to each string. The boys accept their strings, solemnly lowering the sacrificial chicken into the dark rift. I spread out the newspaper I brought, and put the remaining chicken pieces on it. Past experience has shown us we’ll quickly need room in our buckets for crabs.

   When I finish I squat and watch our sons. They peer into the dark, brows furrowed.

   “Come awwwwwwwn,” says Cullen.

    Graham’s string jerks.

    “Whaaaaaat!” he shrieks. “Caught one! Caught one!”

    I have coached them thoroughly in the craft of crabbing. Wait for the crab to latch firmly to the chicken. Bring the string up slowly so the crab doesn’t know it’s being reeled in.

   Graham stands straight up. The crab swings to and fro in front of his belly button, a dark pendulum oblivious to its change in circumstance. One claw affixed to the chicken bit, the other claw greedily spoons meat into its wet maw.

   Reaching behind the crab, I pinch its body between my thumb and forefinger and pry it, with considerable force, from the now shredded chicken wing. I put it in Graham’s bucket where it makes a mad scrabbling.

  “I was careful,” says Graham proudly.

  Cullen pretends to ignore all this. His string is limp.

   “I caught a crab,” says Graham, who is not yet schooled in subterfuge either.

   “You pick up beer cans,” says Cullen.

    Just when I start believing that the crabs in Cullen’s crevice have evolved into something wiser, they start leaping at his string as if they’ve suddenly realized they’re aboard the Titanic. They rise from their dark places furiously stuffing down chicken bits, exhibiting not a whiff of self-preservation.

  There’s always opportunity for imparting parental wisdom.

  “Crabs are called crustaceans,” I say. “Even though their shells are hard, you still need to be really careful. If you break off their claws they won’t be able to eat.”

  “If their claw breaks off, a new one grows on,” says Cullen.

  “It does?”

   “I dropped my string,” says Graham.

   The crabs now pour from the jetty like a locust horde, striking wantonly at the chicken bits and each other with harsh clicks. There is a parable here, the downfall wrought by selfishness and greed, but the boys are too young for that. Crabs are also distantly related to insects, but I keep this to myself too because I’m afraid Cullen will correct me.

    In short order all three buckets are brimming with clacking crabs.

   “We need to empty the buckets,” I say.

    “I’ll do it,” says Cullen.

   “Pour them out in the water,” I tell him. “You don’t want them cracking their shells on the rocks. You’ll have to lean out a little. Take one bucket at a time, and be careful.”

    Perhaps I should be reported to Childhood Protective Services, but the water here is only a few feet deep and I want our boys to stretch.

     Cullen inches carefully down the side of the jetty feet first, crab-like himself. When they are young, they follow your directions to the letter. He settles easily on a broad rock washed with a thin skein of surge. The spilling crabs make a sound like a fistful of rocks flung into the water. 

   I know what to look for next. I grab Graham before he can slide down.

   “Your job is to get the buckets when Cullen passes them up,” I say.

   His solemn nod assures me this is responsibility enough. But something in his eyes tells me he’s solemn for a different reason.

   He looks toward the beach.

  “We’re not going to find enough horseshoe crab pieces,” he says.

  “We might,” I say.

  “Maybe not,” he says.

   I want them to believe anything is possible, but I want them to prepare for disappointment too.

   “We might not find enough pieces,” I say and I feel something stick in my throat.

   We return to crabbing. Cullen stays where he is, but Graham wordlessly moves close to me, sharing my crevice. It is quiet. I hear his small breaths. I feel the butterfly press of his hand on my thigh.

   The sun breaks through the dawn clouds, striking the water in three gauzy silver shafts. Together we breathe.

   Sometimes life’s pieces fit together in ways you don’t expect.

Do stupid things because you can

   When I was nineteen my friend Dennis and I drove to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for Thanksgiving. We were in college at the University of Virginia. We had a few days off from school. We drove past gray cities, then slow moving towns, and finally farms, ice-glazed and still. We drove across the wind-whipped Pamlico Sound. It leapt and churned, the water the color of chocolate milk.

   We spent our first hour on the Outer Banks looking for the cheapest motel we could find. We found it in Nags Head. We stood at the front counter. The desk clerk looked out the frosted windows to where snow flurries now danced. His eyes took in our car.

   “I hope you have the right gear,” he said.

   “We do,” I said, and it was only half a lie.

   “If you don’t, you’d be stupid to go,” he said.

    We paid with a fistful of wrinkled bills. We had a little left for gas, a little for beer, and a little less for food. Food didn’t matter. We had a whole cooked turkey in the cooler we brought into the room. Dennis had cooked the turkey back at the house we shared with two other friends. Dennis loved to cook and he was good at it. Mostly he improvised. He would rummage through the cabinets, using whatever ingredients struck his fancy, making things up as he went along. He combined ingredients that would raise the hairs on the back of a real chef’s neck. He would shake in a little of this and a lot of that. If he used a cookbook I never saw it. I don’t know what he used to season this particular turkey, but whatever it was it was just right; the entire drive down, otherworldly smells tormented us. 

   The minute we got in the room, we opened the cooler and pulled out the turkey. Honeymooners don’t get down to business faster. Dennis had remembered to bring a platter for the turkey, but I had forgotten the silverware. It didn’t matter. Dennis had outdone himself. In short order everything, including us, smelled of turkey. Outside the wind roared and the snow moved in circles. Inside the heater clattered, and drafts pushed through the walls.

  The motel was on the beach. Our room faced east. Over the tops of the dunes we could see the white-capped ocean.

   Dennis rarely hesitated. He didn’t hesitate now.

   “Let’s go,” he said.

   We pulled on our wetsuits. Outside, the snow bit at our faces. It took us longer than it should have to get the surfboards off the car racks. Our fingers were already half frozen.

   A small boardwalk crossed the dunes. The snow made a light dusting on the wood. Dennis walked in front of me. To this day I can still see the enormous prints of his bare feet. My own feet ached as much as my hands. Plenty of people surf in the winter but they are generally prepared, covered from head to toe – neoprene hood for the head, neoprene boots and gloves for the feet and hands - in wetsuit. I had lied to the desk clerk. We had brought what we had.

   By the time we stepped on to the frozen beach everything ached, but I didn’t feel right about whining. I had no hood, boots or gloves, but at least my wetsuit extended all the way to my ankles. Dennis’s wetsuit reached only to his knees. His calves were turning a curious red.

   Snow had gathered in Dennis’s hair. I knew what he would look like when he got old.

   On the exposed beach the wind roared even louder. Brown gobbets of foam quivered on the sand.

   Dennis stopped. He looked at the ocean, gray and heaving and then he looked to me because there was no one else to consult.

   “What’s the water temperature?” he asked.

   “Forty-six.”

   “Are we stupid?”

   “Yes,” I said.

   Dennis watched me for another long moment.

   “I hope we have enough turkey,” he said, and then he walked into the ocean.

   I can’t recall how long we stayed in the water, but it probably wasn’t more than ten minutes. The waves were angry and roared in from every direction, clobbering us and punching the breath from our lungs and spinning us underwater in an oddly quiet brownish-blackness. But we were nineteen, and Dennis was an All-American swimmer with lungs like a Hoover vacuum and we were both so in love with the thrill of riding a wave that all the clobbering was worth it. You see, I had only half lied to the desk clerk. The right gear isn’t just something you buy. 

   I don’t remember how many waves we caught, but it was certainly less than we could count on one hand, and then we were running up the beach, half laughing and half weeping, partly because we were deathly cold, partly because Dennis jolted up the beach like a man on stilts, his legs now a nauseating shade of purple. Everything burned, and we were alive.

   We surfed again the next day. 

   As I write this it seems like yesterday, but it isn’t. My friend Dennis died yesterday. His lungs killed him. That’s where the cancer started.

   It’s stupid not to do the things you can.

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