Home Is Where the Ocean Is

It was just past 4 o’clock when we got into the black car and, “All Along the Watchtower” playing (Charlie’s request), drove down to the beach. Charlie was sitting on his knees, black shoe and white socked feet tucked under him, smiles, rocking (why else listen to rock and roll?). A quick detour to visit the highest point on the Atlantic Seaboard (it was too overcast to see anything) and Charlie was still sitting upright, but his eyes shadowed, his mouth tight. “I want. Ocean,” came his voice over the music. “Half an hour, pal,” said Jim. “Not even.”

In the parking lot, Jim handed me the car key and followed an already hurrying-off Charlie. He was shirtless and running, sort of skipping, over the sand and to the water. He was back and forth into the waves, not minding the cool temperature; he ran in farther and farther with each pass and called out to Jim: “Shirt off!” He grinned back at us and then ducked into the base of a wave, came up standing and face dripping with his back to the water and held his arms out the sides and let himself be taken up into the wave crest.

I guess that must be what it feels like to fly.

I won’t know because I’m too terrified to try to swim in the waves as Charlie does—to trust in the water to carry me up and to trust my swimming ability so that, if the wave throws me down hard, I can swim back up to the surface. But Charlie knows his way inside the waves. Charlie swimming in the ocean is the most obvious statement about who he is.

“He’s not just because of what happened with some vaccine,” Jim has said more than once in regard to Charlie having autism; in regard to Charlie singing Beatles songs and occasionally Rivers of Babylon (not with a lot of the words, but isn’t singing about the melody most of all?); in regard to Charlie wearing Jim’s green jacket on his legs while laughing and saying “Daddy Daddy Daddy!” (this being one way Charlie says his How do I love thee, Dad?). In regard to Charlie swimming in the ocean, and being the boy who he truly is.