What we could see from there

In a recent art journal, an artist from Italy says that everyone recalls a house from their childhood—a place with a certain light they can’t forget. For me it was our holidays to the lighthouse keeper’s rambling, 19th-century worn white guesthouse next to the black-and-white-striped Pampano Beach Lighthouse. If that sounds divine, well, it was the closest thing to heaven a child in love with turquoise oceans and shells and palms could want. Besides all that, since it was all Coast Guard property, including the long silent beach, nobody else was there —so much room to breathe! Just so with the huge fruit basket of welcome on the table each time we entered and the wild stomping races through the wooden house’s secret doorways and board games and puzzles in the living room instead of TV, and late in the afternoon finding Dad out on the porch looking out at the ocean, just sitting, not needing to do anything for once, and I got to sit there with him watching the white sailboats entering the Inland Waterway, feeling the warm breezes go through me like a breath, and our casual talk about what we could see from there, and the casual answering subtropical birdsong and the light.