Pearl's Harbor by Gracie Angelos

Pearl’s Harbor

Has anyone ever tried to convince you to love something that you were scared of?

That’s the story of my life. When my father’s boat was sunk on December 7 my mother

was seven months into her pregnancy with me. There was no turning back; there was no

losing me even though she tried her hardest to; tried her hardest to forget I was a part of

him. I was her first child, the cause of her excitement for years. She couldn’t wait to start



a family with my father, counting off the days until his five year contract with the navy

ended. The day it ended was not under the circumstances we had hoped or expected.

The day he died was the last time I saw my mom smile and truly mean it. She

can’t smile around me because she correlates me with pain, with loneliness, and with

desperation. She never got to tell my father she loved him for the last time, and she’s

disappointed in me for being the reason he needed to work those extra hours the day

he died. I wish she forgave me. I wish she loved me and saw the beauty in what I

brought out of tragedy. I wish my mother was one of the people that came up to me and

said “Thank God there is something so beautiful that came out of something so horrible.

Your mother is blessed to have a part of Josiah with her forever”.

My grandparents see me like them, they see me differently than her; they see me

as God’s precious gift of life in a world surrounded by pain. They treat me as an equal

and do their best to coax me towards the ocean. The sea has been my source of pain and

sadness my entire life. I can’t be close to the shore without feeling a numbing pain in my

chest that reminds me that my father had been swallowed by its unforgiving arms. It had

enclosed and taken him whole as a prisoner of its depth. I am terrified of being stuck out

there. I know it will offer mercy to no one; it is a relentless and just killer.

My grandparent’s house is on the shore; a simple washed wood cottage with sand

and sea grass as a garden and the upper dunes for a backyard. I grew up in that house,

hiding under the covers trying to drown out the sound of the pummeling waves. Even

at a young age I was uneasy, scared of the whitewater which crashed and ate, crashed

and devoured. I had heard so many stories of people being eaten by the sea. It was so

mysterious. It did not choose its victims, just picked up anything in its perimeter.

One day I hope to forgive the sea. To stick my feet into the foaming swirls and

feel no anxiety. Until that day I will keep my distance, watch from afar and pray that one

day I will float carelessly in the water and bob with the waves. I have no grave to visit,

no marble slab to rest upon, so when the day comes that I muster up that courage I will

float in the sea and feel my dad’s arms wrapped around me.