What the Sea Wants

What the sea wants, Robert had written in his diary, the sea will have. What is not given freely, she will take by seduction or force. Her name is Sacrifice.

Robert had fished alone since the loss of his father and two brothers. He had wanted to attend grade twelve on the mainland, had been one of the schoolteacher's most promising students with a natural love for language and a gift for learning. He was curious, inventive, hungry for words and determined to absorb all he could and pass it on. He studied hard and was focused on a future of teaching and writing. He often kept the schoolteacher late to examine his papers in detail and criticize his work. He treated his books like treasures and mystified his family with his passion for schooling and accomplishment. The sea will never be enough for him, his daddy confessed to my grandmother sadly only to have Nana snap back at him, And why should it be, Cyrus? Give the boy his chance.

Robert's chance almost came but for the day his father and brothers headed out under bright, blue skies and didn't return. A freak storm hit and the boats turned back but at the last minute, Cyrus hesitated to clear a fouled net. Still could've made it, John Sullivan told Nana angrily, Would've made it 'cept for that second storm and the sea closin' in the way she did. Wasn't nothin' we could do. Nana went with Long John to break the news and didn't come back until the next day. There was a widow and two small daughters to be tended to and Robert was on the mainland, taking his grade twelve test.

He returned to step into his father's shoes, putting his grade twelve dreams and scores behind him. He had become the only surviving male in his family and there was work to be done, women to be provided for, a house to be put in order. His choices, he came to realize, had gone to the sea and been lost in a freak summer storm. His dreams had been drowned and for just one day, he allowed himself the luxury of rage and bitterness, cursing the ocean and those who earned their living from it, cursing the village and the poverty in which he lived, cursing God for His cruelty and nature for her power. Then, tearless and resigned, barely sixteen and still a child, he took his place as breadwinner and fisherman and vowed never to look back.

He spent the remainder of his life on the sea, seeing both his sisters married and moved away, caring for his mother until her death, eventually marrying and beginning his own family and taking over the house he'd known all his life. He became a good and faithful husband, a loving father and good provider. He was, if not happy, at least content and late at night he wrote of all the things that might have been, pouring out his bitterness and regrets on paper, hoping to put an end to them. He wrote mostly about the sea and her savageness, about a sadness that ebbed but never fully left, about how life plays tricks and takes what it likes, just like the sea. He was an ordinary man, disappointed and often gazing out over a horizon that beckoned but never got any closer except in his imagination. He was reconciled to what was but he missed what might have been and he never truly forgave the sea for her demands.

The sea, his last diary entry read, is never satisfied. The more you give, the more she demands.