Beyond That, the Sea

by Laura Spence-Ash

There she was, back in that familiar house, in that kitchen that smelled of lemon and cinnamon and butter,

every Saturday morning Mr. Gregory wraps a

worn, berry-stained apron around his waist and makes pancakes.

That Sunday afternoons are her favorite time, when she and the Gregorys all sit in the library and listen to the New York Philharmonic on the radio. That some nights she can no longer remember what they look like. On those nights, she turns the light back on and stares at their photo,...

Together, they would always be fifteen and seventeen, on the cusp of something. How sweet that moment is, that moment of before. When anticipation is everything. When everything is new. When there are no consequences, when there is no after.

Some secrets are weights to be borne. Others are gifts, little bits of warmth, to be revisited again and again.

No one else ever needed to know. No one else had the right to know. It was theirs and theirs alone.

Oh, why can’t time be stopped in those moments. Why is it so hard to understand how fleeting it all is?

A need to scramble back in time, to pull up old memories, to regret words, to re-create moments.

When you look back, it’s so easy to see the path that you’ve traveled. But looking forward, there are only dreams and fears.

So many things she would have done differently. Regret, she has found, is the loud thing that’s left.

We love people for all sorts of different reasons and in all sorts of different ways, she says. Remember that. And it only gets better, the older you get. Young love isn’t necessarily the best love.