The ocean knows every address. I'm Captain John Harlow, and this is Letters from the Sea. During the Second World War, a young sailor named Michael Hayes was lost when his destroyer went down during a battle in the Pacific. His body was never recovered. One year later, his mother traveled hundreds of miles to see the ocean for the first time. She brought a glass bottle with her, and inside was a letter. This story is fictional, but the kind of loss behind it is not. My dear Michael, I saw the ocean today. You were right. It is too large to describe. I expected to hate it. I wanted to. But I stood here listening to the waves, and all I could think about was how many times you tried to explain that sound to me. You said that the water never became quiet. Now I understand. Do you remember when you were six and put a note inside one of your father's medicine bottles? You threw it into the creek behind our house, then asked whether the ocean knew every address. I told you that it did. I didn't know what else to say. Mothers sometimes answer impossible questions because their children are still young enough to believe them. The Navy returned your sea bag last November. There were two shirts, your shaving soap, three dollars and fourteen cents, and the last letter that I sent you. You had carried it until the paper became soft along the folds. Your father finally repaired the loose step behind the house. You promised you would fix it when you came home, so he left it untouched for almost a year. When he finished, he ran his hand across the new board and said the boy would have done it better. Those are the only words he has spoken about you since the telegram. He misses you, Michael. He will not say it again. I keep remembering the morning you left. You kissed my cheek, and I told you not to slouch in that beautiful uniform. Then I turned back toward the kitchen because there was bread in the oven. I have relived that moment a thousand times. I always turn around in time, but memories are cruel that way. They let you change everything except what really happened. They gave us a flag for you. They gave us a medal. People bring flowers, but there is nowhere to leave them. That may be the hardest part. A mother ought to know where her child is. I have been angry with the Navy, with the war, and with God, with the ocean, and sometimes with you for not coming home. I'm sorry for that. People say I came here to let you go. I didn't. I'm not letting you go, Michael. I am only letting the letter go. I once told you the ocean knew every address. I need that to be true now. Good night, my boy. Wherever you are, you are still my son, and I am still your mother. Always, Mama. Eleanor sealed the letter inside the bottle and walked into the water until the waves reached the hem of her dress. Then she let it go. The bottle rose, turned once in the current, and slowly drifted beyond the breaking waves. No one knows where it went. Perhaps it sank before the morning, or perhaps someone found it years later on a distant shore. But Eleanor had not asked the ocean for an answer. She had only asked it to carry the words she had nowhere else to leave. She watched until the bottle became too small to see. Then, for the first time since the telegram arrived, Eleanor turned her back on the ocean. And began the long journey home. This has been Letters from the Sea. I'm Captain John Harlow. Join me next time when we open another letter and hear another story carried by the sea. Until then, may the wind be kind, and may it always carry you home.
