from the novel Sinful Folk ”The sound of a...

from the novel Sinful Folk

         ”The sound of a distant ocean covers me with surf, that tide that bears me back eternally into the past, back to the place where I was born.

       People come through the whiteness, through the bright light, but all of them are ghosts. The day before he died, my mother did something inexplicable. She took me out in our little fishing boat, out on the open water of the sea. The thrum and hiss of surf upon the shore behind us, the breaking rhythm never ceasing. My mother waited until we were out of sight of land. She squinted against the bright sunlight, making sure of our isolation. And then she taught me something: strange words in a foreign tongue, a lilting sing-song rhythm to it.” 

        —  from the novel Sinful Folk