Article by Make The Days Contributor Marie Monroe

 

“In our Night Sea we forge ourselves and change our worlds forever.  In the mornings of our lives we laugh and remember…”

 

I have a Cuban friend who came to the U.S. when he was 15.  From the 2^nd generation of his family to live in severe poverty, he says that one night he stood on the beach in his home country thinking that, at 15, he was a man ready to make his own way in the world and to help his family.  He talks only rarely about his actual journey to the United States, but says more about his home country, his thoughts and feelings that night on the beach, and how much he misses his family.

 

One day, at lunch, we sat with 4 other friends around a rectangular table just big enough for the 6 of us.  During our conversation about movies and music, he became quiet - unusual for this gregarious, happy man.  After a moment he said “the boat I came in was smaller than this table.”

 

Some 20 years later he had begun to talk about his journey at last.

 

Someone asked a question to help him along … how long did you travel?  Very quietly he said, “I never knew.”

 

That was the extent of his story that day and soon, after a brief lull, he had returned to his usual conversation about movies that have been seen and must be seen as soon as possible. 

Over the next few years I’ve learned just a bit more about his journey in the sea:  That one just “hoped” the currents would carry you to the U.S., that sharks were a constant worry, that he had no food and no water and was very cold at night, very hot in the day …

 

From time to time I have tried to imagine a 15 year old young man so courageous and hopeful that he would launch himself, with blind faith, into a Night Sea, having said his goodbye soliloquy to the comforts of the company of his family and friends forever.  Through the years he has said that he loves his home country and I believe him as I watch his childhood memories ignite another light in his unusually bright eyes.  He has managed to support his family all these years.  He has always worked so much that he sleeps very little …

 

Ramon cast himself adrift in a summer night - in the shorts and cotton shirt of his beach bound life.  Barefoot, he dragged a tiny boat that he shared with his siblings, cousins and neighbor children to float just off shore, piled so high with giggling children they often had to jettison a few to swim happily alongside.  He said one time that when the village children next went out to play in the boat they would know someone had finally gone to America.  It didn’t take long, he imagined, for the news that he had been the one to get around.

 

As another friend of mine has said about Ramon’s journey, it wouldn’t matter how far offshore you were - 20 miles at sea is as desolate as 50, and, he added, trying harder to imagine the psychology of our friend who, at 15 and alone, took his Night Sea journey:  You wouldn’t know if the water was 20 feet deep or 1,000 feet deep, which way you were going or if you would simply go forever in the wrong direction …

 

These thoughts of Ramon have come this winter as my part of the United States have frozen with ice bearing down on trees and power lines to cripple our region. 

 

I have stayed in touch with warmth by cell phone and imagination.  I speak with my friend in Tucson who tells me that her hiking trail is so deserty hot today that the rescue mules carry water and their trainers keep watch for the disoriented and dehydrated…

 

I think of the summer days of Cuba that Ramon described …

 

My editor sent a quick email just prior to my loss of computer access, “I am so sorry to report, Marie, that today, in my part of California, it is a beautiful 70 degrees.”

 

There’s better weather out there, somewhere.

 

I have become my own sort of refugee, from house to house with too many ‘necessities,’ I go fleeing the loss of heat and electricity.  It is a guilty thought to equate myself even marginally to people like Ramon.  My small suffering is exactly that, but, however small, my own struggle has awakened a deeper compassion.

 

What strength in those who have survived night sea journeys so far more dangerous than mine. 

 

How many blessings in my small life to keep me safe from lost homes and lost families …

 

How fortunate I have been that the pursuit of my dreams and my comforts did not endanger my life, cost me my family or the things I love.

 

Arizona and California have become my Florida shores in a miniscule, simply symbolic way.  They hold out promise that there are better times, that the sun continues to warm the earth, and that my own sun will return, but more, in my simple little vagabond way right now, I am remembering the many who have suffered far more than me.

 

I think about New Orleans.  I think about drought and famine and tsunamis.  Somehow I’ve listened to these unknown, grief-stricken and traumatized people these last few icy and dark days …

 

Ramon, now off in another city, calls often.  I miss him.  He turned 45 this year, but I still remember and love the 15 year old in him that I never had the privilege to know until he was 30.

 

In our Night Sea we forge ourselves and change our worlds forever.  In the mornings of our lives we laugh and remember, but laugh and laugh and laugh. 

 

Happy birthday, Ramon.  Good morning, New Orleans wherever you are … the sun is up and we are warming.

 

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

-C.S. Lewis

 

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