Welcome to Letters from the Sea. I'm Captain John Harlow. These are stories carried across oceans, written in hope, longing, fear, and love. Letters from those who went away and those who waited for them to come home. Some letters are written because a person has something to say, and others are written because distance has finally made them brave enough to say it. This one is a story. The sailor who wrote it was named Samuel Reed, and he had been away from his wife and young son for nearly two years. He wrote the letter at the final port before his ship turned north for home, and because another vessel was leaving sooner, Samuel sent the letter ahead, along with a small parcel he had bought for his boy. His wife's name was Elizabeth. Their son was Thomas. And this is what Samuel wrote. My dearest Elizabeth, by the time this reaches you, we should already be on the last stretch home. I know I have said that before, but this time I believe it. The captain says we may see England within three weeks, provided the wind holds and the sea behaves herself. She has done neither for very long since I met her, but a man is allowed to hope. I have seen things out here I wish I had words to properly describe. There are places where the water is so blue that it hardly seems like water at all. You look down beside the ship and feel as though you are sailing across the sky. I have seen islands rise from the morning mist, green and bright, with birds circling above them by the thousands. I have watched dolphins race beneath the bow. Thomas would have loved that. They turned their heads as they swam and looked straight up at you, almost as though they are wondering why men need ships when the good Lord already gave the world fins. And three days ago, I saw a whale. Elizabeth, I cannot tell you how large it was. Its back rose from the sea like a piece of the earth itself, and when it breathed, the sound carried across the water like a great door opening somewhere beneath us. Every man aboard fell silent, even Mr. Collins. And you know from my letters that silence has never been among Mr. Collins' natural gifts. I stood there thinking of Thomas. Do you remember the morning before I left, when he asked whether the ocean had an end? I told him it did not. That was a foolish answer, of course, but he was only four years old, and I was still pretending that fathers were supposed to know everything. Tell him I found the end after all. It is wherever a sailor finally turns toward home. I bought something for him there, a little wooden ship, no longer than my hand. The man who carved it gave her three masts, though one leaned slightly to the left. I tried to point that out when I bought it. He looked at me and said, Then she has character. So I paid him before the ship acquired any more of it. The little vessel is wrapped in cloth and tied inside the parcel accompanying this letter. Tell Thomas it has crossed part of the world to reach him, and that he must give it a proper name. Although knowing our son, he will name it the Pickle or the Captain Turnip, or consider the matter settled. I have spent much of this voyage thinking about all the things I would do when I returned. At first, I imagined grand things. I would buy better clothes, find respectable work. Save enough money for a larger house with a view of the harbor. But lately, what I imagine is much smaller. I think about the loose board near our bedroom door and the little sound it makes when you step upon it. I think about our blue cup beside the washbasin. I think about Thomas asleep with one foot outside of the blanket, no matter how many times you cover him. And I think about that old chair beside the window, the one I always complained was uncomfortable. Do not let anyone throw it away. I find myself wanting very much to sit in it again. It is the strangest thing, Elizabeth. I left home because I believed the world was somewhere else, beyond the harbor and beyond the horizon, beyond every place I had already seen. And now, having crossed more ocean than I care to remember, I have begun to understand that seeing the world and finding your place in it are not the same thing. Tell Thomas his father saw the world, and then tell him his father decided there was nowhere in it he would rather be than home with him. I will tell him the stories myself when I arrive. I will tell him about the blue water and the islands and the dolphins and the whales. And perhaps, if he asked me again whether the ocean has an end, I will give him a better answer. Give him a kiss for me, and save one for yourself. I will collect it when I get there. Your loving husband, Samuel. The letter reached Elizabeth Reed 23 days later. Inside the parcel was a little wooden ship, exactly as Samuel had described it, three masts with one leaning slightly to the left. Samuel's vessel was lost six days after he wrote the letter. No wreckage was ever found. Thomas kept the little ship for the rest of his life, and when he became old enough to understand, his mother gave him the letter. Samuel Reed never crossed the threshold of his home again. He never sat in that uncomfortable chair, and he never collected the kiss Elizabeth had saved for him. But the sea had shown Samuel the world, and somehow, his letter brought him home. This has been Letters from the Sea with Captain John Harlow.
