I’m feeling a bit sentimental.
We will be heading down to the shore for the Holiday weekend,
And I can’t help but to think
About the road that got us
Here.
Pardon the cliché, but it truly does feel like yesterday that my husband and I were spending our first summer together
Down the shore,
The days when we would sit on the beach for hours on end,
Until the families retreated, as their umbrellas and coolers were lugged away,
And we were practically the only ones left on the sand
To watch the sun retreat into the evening.
In fact, the first weekend we spent down the shore was also the first weekend that my husband met my extended family.
He was coming into my family at a difficult time for all of us,
as we were all dealing with a horrible illness that was afflicting one of our “members”,
but my husband managed to stay strong for me,
with offerings of great love and support,
even though he was wading through somewhat tumultuous,
and definitely new,
oceans.
So many things became very real that weekend.

I can remember sitting on the beach,
Just the two of us,
Late one afternoon.
I remember daydreaming about our future,
Something that seemed so very far away,
Yet so very real.
I had something very important to tell him.
Our baby’s name.
No, I was not pregnant.
Our daughter would not be born for many more years.
But, I knew her name, that day,
And I had to get his approval.
I remember how nervous I was.
I remember drawing graffiti in the sand with my fingers,
Hoping,
Upon hope,
That he would say yes to me.
Because I was not just asking this man,
My boyfriend, mind you,
To agree to a future name for our future baby,
But I was really asking him to have babies with me.
To agree to a family
And a forever.

That weekend, my husband met a member of my family who wouldn’t see the following summer.
He wouldn’t be able to dance with me at our wedding,
To hold up our chuppah,
To swing me around his arm in a rowdy Horah.
He wouldn’t be there when our daughter was born.
Although, I know he was actually there for all of these moments.
He would be the one who my husband would call, just a few months later, to ask his permission, along with my dad’s, for my hand in marriage,
And he would be the person for whom our daughter is named.
The same name that I had told my husband on the beach.

So on that day that day,
years ago,
on the beach,
as the sun began to fade,
As a loved one’s life had begun to fade,
My husband became a member of my family,
And we started our own family,
As he agreed to so much more than a name.
He would be there for me,
And for all of us,
In good times
And in bad,
In health,
And through that most devastating sickness,
He agreed to my today,
And to my tomorrows
For as long as we both shall live.
So, this weekend,
as we bring our daughter to the beach,
and sit with her, in the ocean breeze, until the light becomes low,
we will tell her the story of her name,
and of her family before her,
as we weave a tapestry in the sand
of those we’ve loved,
those we’ve lost,
and those who are still to come.