Abby & the Sea

 When Abby was a little girl, she reveled without a care, and mystery and adventure could only excite her.  She took utmost delight in life and felt like an explorer wherever she went.  Every summer for six weeks, her parents took her on vacation to Lake Erie.  Those six weeks were always her most favorite time of the year, even more than Christmas.  The drive to Lake Erie from her home in Pittsburgh always took a very long time, but Abby liked to sleep during the long car rides.  The lake was vast and had many beaches.  When Abby looked out from the shore, she couldn’t even see the other end, and therefore, she always thought she was gazing upon the sea.

            Lake Erie was fun, particularly when the summer days in August would get so hot.  Abby would run down to the beach and roll around playfully in the gentle waves.  She would run back to her father, giggling and covered with sand.  Her mother would comb her long, blonde hair and take her over to the showering station to get all the sand off.  After playing at the beach, they would all head over to a small concession stand to get shaved ice.  Abby always got the rainbow kind because rainbows were her favorite.

            To young Abby, there was no such thing as feeling the weight of the world.  Those vacations at the lake were comprised of building castles in the sand along the beaches and endless swimming.  Lake Erie was enormous, and it fed Abby’s wild imagination with fantasies and stories that she would tell her parents.

            One time she ran up to her mother, concealing something in between her two tiny hands.

            “Guess what I got!” she shouted.

            Her mother was fond of her playful imagination and responded with a smile, “What could it be, Princess Abby?”

            Abby smiled and slowly unveiled what she was holding in her hands.  There, nestled in some wet sand, was a tiny snail shell scintillating in the sunlight.  “It’s a birthday gift from the mermaids!”

            “Why that’s quite wonderful!” she exclaimed.  “Did they ask how old you were?”

            Abby nodded and held up six fingers.  “Where’s Daddy?”

            “He went on a business trip, honey.”

            “But it’s vacation!”

            Her mother laughed and picked Abby up into her lap.  She brushed the hair away from her swollen eye and looked at her daughter with a sense of pride and mystic wonder.  Abby looked up to her mother and touched her eye.

            “What’s wrong with your eye, Mommy?” she asked.  “Why are you crying?”

            “Because I love you, birthday girl.”

            Abby’s mother couldn’t tell her child what had transpired in the hotel room earlier that morning while Abby was asleep.  But Abby knew.  She had seen her father during his violent streaks from behind the couch in the living room.  She knew what he was capable of doing.  She heard the abusive words and threats that were targeted at her mother.  Abby knew.

            She didn’t make sense of a world that was so at war with itself, so she imagined a wonderful land across The Great Sea where the beaches had glitter for sand.  In Abby’s Kingdom, she was a beautiful princess, and all of the people in her Kingdom were talking animals.  She reigned over them with kindness and never did them any harm.  One time, when a begging mouse came up to her and asked for food, she invited him over for a grand feast where they ate in a house that looked like a giant picnic basket.

            When the summer was over, Abby hated going back home to the city, but she knew she would always come back.  She especially hated saying goodbye to her people.  The mice and deer and ducks all cried with big tears as they waved goodbye to their Princess with the bright blue eyes.  One particular summer, Abby waved goodbye to The Great Sea, telling her people how she looked forward to seeing them next year.  She always saw them next year.

That winter, Abby’s parents decided that they were officially separating, but Abby did not know what that meant.  She listened with her ear up against the door while her parents argued.  She heard the word “divorce” and it sounded scary like a monster, and she wanted to talk about defeating The Divorce with her people of the Kingdom.  But Abby would be alone this time.  The Divorce meant she would not be returning to The Great Sea next summer. Abby would not return to The Great Sea for nearly ten years.

When Abby turned ten years old, her parents officially separated and she lived with her mother.  As she grew up, her mother was plagued by loneliness and began to drink heavily.  She didn’t see much of her father, but sometimes he would come back to Pittsburgh for weekend visits.  Abby felt very much alone and missed going to the lake.  She had a hard time making friends in school.  They would call her weird because she was always writing in her notebook.  Sometimes they would steal the pages and rip them up.  This made Abby cry.

            When Abby got older and was in high school, she started to hang out with the wrong kind of people.  She was dressed in all black:  a black cut-off shirt, black jeans, black shoes, black eyeliner, and black nail polish.  On her left shoulder, she bore a tattoo of a compass, symbolically guiding her toward her dreams and leading her heart in her adventures.  On her right arm, she had even more tattoos; three seagulls flew on her flesh adjacent to a bracelet composed of seashells.  The seabirds seemed almost animate, as if they were ready to take flight off her body into the sky.  Finally, there were two anchors tattooed onto each of her ankles.  They kept her grounded.

            But Abby no longer felt grounded, and she felt like her dreams were trash and her heart misguided.  She went by Abigail now, and she smoked cigarettes and thought about her life.  Her parents had separated more than ten years ago, but the consequences of her father’s infidelity showed up in her mother’s drunkenness.  She didn’t know where her father was.  She barely remembered his face, let alone the times they had shared at the lake.

When Abigail’s friend Judy learned that she had developed depression and a life-threatening eating disorder, Judy vowed to take Abigail to Lake Erie for a few weeks in the summer.  Judy and Abigail had stopped talking since she started wearing black and hanging out with the wrong crowd.  Abigail wanted to invite the guys she knew, and she wanted to bring along vodka and marijuana, but Judy refused to take any of that stuff with them.

            “This is our trip, Abby,” Judy said.  “Just you and me.”

            “I just want to have a little fun.”

            Judy still called her Abby because they grew up together.  She understood Abby.  She knew what had been going on in her life.

            When Abigail and Judy got to the lake, Abigail took a deep breath.  The aroma instantly took her back to when she was young, and she couldn’t help but smile.  The lake was gorgeous and it looked the same as she had remembered it.  Abigail giggled to herself as she remembered the fantasies she used to think of when she played at the lake as a young girl.

The two decided to take a canoe that rested near the shore for a trip.  They hopped in the yellow canoe and set out while the sun was high.  Abigail rowed and rowed.  They rowed for what seemed like forever.  They rowed passionately.  Judy watched Abigail carefully.  The smile never left her face.

When they finally reached the other side of the lake that was known as The Great Sea, Abigail had remembered her Kingdom.  The talking animals there shouted and cheered for her, welcoming back the Princess who had been gone for so long.  The mermaids brought her beautiful and exquisite shells as presents, and the begging mouse who had once asked her for food was now quite fat and had a beautiful family.

            Late that night, when Abigail and Judy returned from their long trip on the water, Abigail turned on the desk lamp in the hotel at which they were staying.  Ever since she played into the fantasies of her imagination as a little girl, she loved storytelling.  She wanted to be a writer.  She penned in her notebook in sloppy handwriting:  “Life is short and sometimes tragic, but I vow to never forget that magic.”