My dad died a few months ago and yet I still hear him. I can’t listen to bands like the Doobie Brother’s without hearing his voice in the mix—even if he did make up his own words half the time. I still hear his signature catchphrases that always made my sisters and me laugh.
“He was a prince and a horse, but mostly horse,” he’d say to describe someone.

In 2008, for my college graduation, my family and I took a cruise on the now infamous Carnival Triumph. I don’t recall what we ate for dinner that first night, but I still remember our waiter. A dashing black man with a French accent dazzled us with a card trick before taking our drink orders. Glimmers of chandelier light reflected in his glasses as he introduced himself as Jean Pierre, and his name tag said he originated from Haiti.

I have found your maternal spirit at the top of the Point as I breathe in the salty mist of the Delaware Bay estuary in Lewes. This is where I have landed. A place I do wish you would have ventured with me. I talk to the sea now instead of you. I talk to the creatures that I believe live in the sea deep within the confines of each ecosystem whether aquatic or in the forests. My conversations in the marsh I will share with you as it is my journey now.