She said it with complete peace.
The peace of someone who has been loved for sixty-one years by someone who took the time to learn them.
She reached down.
She unlaced one shoe.
She took it off.
She unlaced the other.
She took it off.
She said: is it all right if I go in?
I said: yes.
She said: I want to feel it.
I said: of course.
I rolled up her pant legs.
Not because she couldn’t do it.
Because I wanted to be useful.
I wanted to be part of this.
She walked forward.
The water came.
It came over her feet.
She made a sound.
Not a word.
The specific sound of someone receiving something cold and real and unexpected in its fullness.
She said: oh.
Just that.
Oh.
She stood in the edge of the ocean.
The Atlantic, doing what it had been doing for longer than anyone could comprehend, touched the feet of an eighty-six-year-old woman from North Carolina who had waited her whole life for it.
