Originally Posted by
Merman Dan
This isn't so much a bitc# as a moan. Folks keep posting the image on Facebook with "If you could sit on this bench for one hour and chat with anyone from the past or present who would it be?". I keep thinking of Marina. After the birth of our third child, my wife miscarried. She was meant to be Marina. After that experience we turned to adoption and have welcomed four wonderful children into our arms. Yet my response to the image was "If I could pick an age it would have to be Marina, as a baby, and I would do all the talking."
One summer I was swimming in the shallows with my two youngest girls. I would swim into the depths, grab a handful of sargassum seaweed, and bring it back to show them all of the creatures that lived in the seaweed; hermit crabs, filefish, shrimp, and more. On one leaf I saw what looked like a fish eyeball. I touched it and it detached from the seaweed. I held it in my hand and it attached. It was a tiny anemone. The anemone stayed on my hand for half an hour before it floated away.
Years later I would start my sargassum sleeve, a tattoo dedicated to my children. Closest to my wrist, in a position I would see whether I was in long sleeves or short, I had an anemone placed. That is there for Marina.
Yeah... I am crying... papa seahorse missing a child I never had the chance to hold, kiss, tickle, or teach. I hope there is an afterlife so that I might finally hold her.