It was a cold, clear evening the night I played my last song in Gloucester.  I was sitting on my favorite street corner in that small fishing town ravaged by recent recession, strumming melancholy choruses and listening to the steady clink of coins dropping into my guitar case.  As the sun left the sky, the lights in the bars began to flicker on one by one, beckoning the fisherman who were home for the night.  From where I was I could see my sailboat Elizabeth in the harbor, but tonight it seemed to reflect a different light.  I had been in this part of Massachusetts for only 2 years, but it felt like the closest to home that I had been in a long time.  I understood the people here; everyone in Gloucester has either lost something or is running from something they wish they could lose- I happened to be doing both, and on that cold night in the breeze that carried stories of a harsh winter to come, I realized I couldn’t run anymore.

I have been lost for years.  Before it all changed, I lived with my parents in a small house on an island in the mid-Atlantic which I called home.  My mother was there for research, and my father was a photographer.  After they left me I had no one, and I was forced to come back to the States.  I’ve spent my life trying to find that place again to no avail.  Last time a storm blew me into the rocks of an island off the coast of Florida, and Elizabeth was almost unsalvageable.  When I got back, I fell into an awful depression, but I never drank.  Unlike the people of Gloucester, I could not drown my problems with alcohol so I didn’t waste my time with it.  I waited 5 years for the hope to come back again, the ghost of hope which had whispered in my ear all those times before, but it seemed that it never would.  That all changed the night before my last day in Gloucester, the night I saw the dragonfly again.

That morning, I dug my glass money jar out of a drawer full of almost-blank papers with hundreds of unfinished beginnings on them.  I spent the last of my savings on enough food, water, and dog chow to feed me and Bodie for a while and proceeded to sever the few ties I had in Gloucester.    Laden with supplies, I walked down the dock, pausing for a second to look at the word I had painted in small script on the hull- In memory of Edward and Elizabeth Dawkins.  I felt my parents’ renewed presence still, and so the hope remained with me as well.  That night, as I sat on my deck and listened to the boats in the harbor rocking together with their melody like lethargic windchimes for the last time, I realized that for the first time in my life, I had no second thoughts.

I slept soundly that night for the first time in years.  I was up before the sun the next morning, with Bodie a mess of sleepy mottled fur at my feet.  He was my one constant, the one thing that was invariably with me day in and day out, no matter where we may end up.  His aging was my constant worry- I knew that soon I would be alone again, and the thought of  that was the one thing that still scared me.  The lights of Gloucester shone dimly through a small window in the cabin.  Sitting up in bed, I fingered the well worn photo of my parents and I that had been clipped to the wall since the day I bought the sailboat.  I was 12 at the time the photo was taken, and it was the last picture my parents were ever in.  I eventually stood up, sliding open the wooden door and climbing onto the deck.  It’d had a nice polished finish since the summer before, and everything on the boat was kept meticulously clean and well taken care of.  I’d known my way around those kinds of boats for as long as I could remember.  My sentimentality for GLoucester would never be gone, but the hope told me that I couldn’t stay.  As I untied the deck cleats, Bodie came out and stood at the bow. looking around.  I like to think that in a way, he knew where we were going.  I certainly didn’t- not then, at least.  As I guided the boat out of the harbor, I didn’t feel happiness, but I didn’t feel fear either.  I felt empty, but I began to feel the slightest hint of a new freedom.

I lost track of time.  Many hour later, when the sun had almost completed its daily journey, I looked back for the first time and realized there was no longer anything to look back to.  Still, I felt nothing.  I simply sighed and waited for the sun to duck below the watery horizon.  The stars were clearer than I’d seen them in a long time, so I sat for awhile and stared.  On my desk in the cabin, there was a single leather notebook with my name on it-Marie-that had never been opened in the 21 years since I received it.  It had been my last birthday present from my parents.  Under the light of a dim reading lamp, I opened it, smelling the subtle yet familiar scent of old paper.  And I wrote my final beginning.
        
November 2nd
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m sorry.  Please let me come home.
A few days passed.  I carried the notebook everywhere.  I was looking for something, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.  I checked my maps constantly, trying to spot the smallest speck of land on the horizon as the light bounced brightly off the waves, creating shimmering prisms.  I thought endlessly about my parents, which I had avoided doing for years.  I had been running from it for too long.

November 20th
Dear Mom and Dad,
My most vivid memories are from that night.  I remember that it happened 21 years ago, mom, the night before your birthday.  It was one of those nights when we liked to leave the windows open and listen to the soft crashes of the waves against the rocks that were just out of view.  The aroma of pumpkin spice wafted around our little house, the light from that small candle sporadically illuminating those quaintly whitewashed wooden walls.  I remember that picture of the 3 of us on dad’s boat, all with happy smiles anything but staged that was visible through my half-open bedroom door.  It was the last thing I saw before I woke up in my new life.  I remember vividly the suffocating heat, that pure adrenaline-induced hysteria of the moment before I was forced to jump out of my bedroom window.  I still have the scars, awful reminders that I’m forced to look at every day.  When I found out your were gone, I didn’t talk for weeks.  I had realized the horrible, inescapable fact that has haunted me since that day: I lit that candle.  I left that candle burning, and it was all my fault.  And for that, I will always be so terribly, terribly sorry.  I am writing, finally, to ask for your forgiveness.

My mother always loved dragonflies.  She loved them because the physics of dragonfly flight had confounded scientists for so long and she thought that they were uniquely beautiful masterpieces of evolution, so she made them her life’s work.  The island had millions of them.  They were a kind of sparkling, iridescent purple, a unique species, and nobody knew quite how they got there.  When I saw one perched on the railing of a Bar Harbor fishing charter when I was 19, I got a job on that boat and went looking for the first time.  I found nothing.  I’d been chasing that dragonfly for my entire life, hoping against hope that someday I could go back to that island- the only place I’ve ever called home.

I was enjoying lunch with Bodie in contented silence when I saw a storm on the horizon.  It was an ominously dark and massive supercell in the distance- should’ve seen it earlier.  it forced me to stick my head back in reality.  I checked the radar, saw the big red spot headed right for me.  The radio had remained off since I bought the boat 7 years ago, but that day I pressed the power button for the first time.  I heard the Mayday calls, the coast guard warnings, the NOAA predictions- all of it.  I was in trouble, but there was nothing I could do.  So, I furled the sails, dropped anchor, and waiter.

The water splashed rhythmically against the sides of the boat as I got out my guitar.  It was my way of dealing with unwanted emotions, and I could feel dread creeping up behind me in its dark cloak.  Until now, it was a feeling foreign to me.    I softly strummed my melancholy music, playing not for myself but for the people I’d left behind- the people of Gloucester who had shared my plight, the people who had tried to empathize with me that I had so callously shut out of my life, but most of all, I played for my parents.

The storm hit at precisely 5:41pm.  The wind went from 5 to 20 to 70 knots within 5 minutes, and the rain pounded down on the deck with a steady drumbeat, stinging my face.  Bodie was in the cabin, and I was on the deck in my old windbreaker, keeping the bow pointed into the waves that were steadily rising to over 10 feet.  If I were to let the boat go broadside, it would have been over.  The waves crashed across the deck, slamming mercilessly into my precious hull.  I read in a book one that a man saw waves so high that they blocked out the sun, and the last thing he and his crew saw before their ship was destroyed was a wall of darkness.  I shivered, but not from the rain.  An hour passed, leaving me soaked and sorely feeling the physical strain of keeping the boat from capsizing.  I was breathing heavily and I started shaking badly, overcome by weakness and a rapidly growing sense of fear that I hadn’t truly felt since the night of the fire.  once again, I felt the grim reaper tapping on my shoulder.  I staggered and collapsed on the deck, dully aware of a sharp pain in my head.  The last thing I saw before I blacked out was a dragonfly, inexplicably perched on the railing at the tip of the bow, its compound eyes staring out into the tumultuous depths of the ocean.
I woke up in the green-yellow tall grass surrounding the island house.  I could hear the omnipresent sound of the waves crashing softly against the rocks once again, blending beautifully with the familiar and tranquil buzz of dragonflies flying erratically about.  The wind gently rustled the long grass, bringing back to me the subtle earthy smell of home.  The burn scars on my arms and legs were now punctuated with angry red gashes and cuts, and I could feel dried blood covering one side of my head, but nothing hurt.  Slightly squinting in the almost harsh sunlight, I stood up unsteadily.  The house was still there, but only one wall was standing amid the rubble.  I began to tear up, but Bodie appeared by my side, the stiff burden of his old age suddenly gone.  I smiled and knelt down to hug him, looking back at the rocks.  Elizabeth was wrecked, but there was nothing I couldn’t fix.  The journal lay open on the sand, and I ran down to get it, gingerly dusting it off.  Bodie stepped towards the house, looking back at me expectantly.  Reluctantly, I followed.  The single wall remaining wasn’t even charred.  I gingerly stepped through the nonexistent doorway, dumbfounded by what I saw.  The candle which had haunted me for so long sat upright on the floor, long ago burned out.  But on the wall, the portrait that I remembered so vividly was still hanging in its modest frame, with no hint of decay.  For the first time since my life here was taken away, I genuinely smiled.

Dear Mom and Dad,
Thank you.