Most letters carried across the ocean are meant for someone waiting on the other side. But some letters are meant for yourself. I'm Captain Harlow, and this is Letters from the Sea. Captain August Delaney wrote this letter near the end of his final voyage, and he named it The First Thing I Ever Loved. My dearest, you were the first thing I ever loved. I was fourteen when I first saw you stretching beyond the harbor. I lied about my age, found work aboard a merchant ship, and left home believing that you would show me everything worth seeing. And you nearly did. You showed me islands covered with green and cities glowing beneath foreign stars and waves tall enough to make a church steeple look small. You frightened me. You humbled me. And every time I thought I had finally understood you, you changed. Perhaps that was why I kept returning. There was always another horizon, another harbor, another reason to leave home just one more time. You were jealous, though. You took birthdays from me, Christmas mornings, my daughter's first steps. For years, I blamed you for all of it. But a sea cannot steal what a man keeps carrying to it willingly. That truth took me longer to learn than it should have. When my daughter Ruth was eight years old, she drew a picture of our family. Her mother stood beside the house, and Ruth was holding her hand. I was standing near the edge of the paper, beside a little ship. She had drawn me so far away that my face was nothing but a circle. That night, she asked me whether I loved you more than I loved her. I told her that it was a foolish question, but it wasn't. It was simply a question I was too ashamed to answer. I still have that picture. It has crossed three oceans folded inside my logbook, and tonight it is lying on the table beside me. Ruth has a little boy of her own now. His name is Benjamin. He writes me letters in enormous crooked handwriting, and in every one he asks when his grandfather is coming home. So tomorrow morning, when this ship reaches port, I will step onto that dock for the last time. There will be no grand speech. Sailors who make grand speeches usually discover they have forgotten something and must come back aboard. I will take my coat, my sea chest, and Ruth's drawing. Then I will turn my back on you. You will go on moving as though I had never been here. That is your nature. You belonged to no man before me, and you will belong to none who come after. But I understand something now that I did not understand at fourteen. You were the first thing I ever loved, but you were never the thing that loved me back. My family did that. And somehow, after all the empty chairs and broken promises, they still do. I have spent forty-seven years returning to you, but tomorrow at last, I am returning to them. Goodbye. Captain August Delaney kept his word. Ruth and Benjamin were waiting when he come ashore. He spent the next nine years teaching the boy to fish from the harbor wall, although he never once took him beyond the lighthouse. And Ruth kept that old childhood drawing for the rest of her life. Sometimes the hardest voyage a sailor ever makes is the one that finally carries him home. This has been another Letters from the Sea. I'm Captain Harlow. Until next time, may the wind be kind, and may it always carry you home.
