Waves

When I was kid, we lived in Africa. For vacation from my parents' rather strenuous work dealing with the creation of a language, my family would go to the Indian ocean. Sometimes Mombasa, sometimes, Kilifi, most importantly, we went to the ocean. We would go to the beach, and we would play in the waves, play with the hermit crabs. There was this one time that we found this gigantic hermit crab, it was freaking huge, the shell was like 7 inches long. There is so many good memories wrapped up in our times by the Indian ocean.
After my sister died we took a vacation, kind of to take a break from my parents' work, but also to kind of spend time together as a family, and help us all to smile again. I think it was that trip that I began to associate waves with healing, and rebirth, because I think it was during that vacation that I began to be able to live my life again. I really have no idea how much time elapsed in between when she died and when we went on that vacation, but I honestly don't remember anything in between the two events, besides like random people always being in our house, that's all I can remember.

Being here in Chicago its nice, because I am right by the lake. I can hear the waves if I just walk a hundred yards. Sure, it is not the ocean, but lake Michigan is a large enough body of water that you can't really see the other side anyway, and its mostly the sound that refreshes me, anyway. The sound is so important for me, when I went to the lake during the really cold times here in Chicago and it was frozen, I felt, almost, worse than I did before, just because the water wasn't allowed to make the sound that it wanted to make so desperately.

George, if I were a house, I would want to be a house built by the ocean, too, but I would want to be built by the Indian ocean, so I could always hear the waves.