salt air and cigarettes

The smell of salt air and cigarettes curls into the shape of childhood memories in a way not even a photograph could. It’s thick and filled with distant reminders, as if I’m flipping through a photo album with each step down the narrow cobblestone streets leading toward the sea. 

I love the shore but fear the sea. Its glittering surface is so inviting until you jump in and are swallowed by its vastness. And I hate cigarettes, but I can’t deny I know how the burn feels in the chest, swirling around like my inner demons being awakened before I breathe them out. 

Most of my time spent with my pop was by the shore, where he’d remain on the porch with a cigarette in his hand, and where we’d still find him when we returned from our day in the sea. No amount of begging could get him to come to the beach with us. He couldn’t risk his back issues or his well-settled-into routine. Every morning on our annual family vacation, somewhere on the coastline of Delaware or Maryland, I’d come down the stairs to find him already sitting on the balcony with a cup of coffee and a cigarette listening to the waves break. It seemed so peaceful, a perfect escape, until my cousins and I came filing through his sanctuary with baby dolls and high-pitched voices. Somehow, I still saw him smile the most when he was around us, even though he’d have to put the light out.  

I always wondered what he was thinking about all day, alone on the balcony at the beach house. I thought he must have been bored out of his mind, though now that I’m older I think that it must have been nice. Maybe his mind was on his time in the military, his job as a mailman, Frank Sinatra, the story of his childhood dog, Rusty, that he’d tell us a million times, or the boat he had on the Chesapeake. Or maybe those are the only things I knew about Pop.  

Going on the boat were my earliest memories of Pop, besides Christmas and birthdays, as we’d take a trip to the Chesapeake every Fourth of July. My sister and I shared the bunk room, and I’d fall asleep watching the boat rock on the water out the port window. One time we woke up feeling mischievous and disrupted Pop from his snoring with the sound of a Santa figurine that pulled down his pants and farting. If it were anyone else, he’d be livid, but the look on his face was worth it to us and we still laugh about it to this day, though he isn’t here to remember it with us. We’d break open glow sticks and track in sand, yet the only time I heard him yell at us was the constant, “no jumping on the boat!” 

Pop passed away suddenly just two weeks after I saw him for our family Christmas party in seventh grade. A heart attack. It made sense with his lifestyle, but it shook our whole family to our core. This was the first true grief I had ever experienced, and the remnants stained my pillows every night for months. I never let anyone know how much I struggled with Pop’s death out of embarrassment and my comfort with suppressing my emotions until they’d burst. 

I wish I could go back to my last moments with him as I’ve replayed them a thousand times in my head. That year we had Christmas at his brother’s house, my Uncle Jim and Aunt Cindy’s. The adults asked me how school was, and I told them about my honor roll streak, the school play, and that I was picking up lacrosse that spring in addition to field hockey. He said he was proud of me, but I wish he could see all that I’m doing now.  

His last words were, “Emma-Em come give me a hugga-hugga,” as they always were since I can remember. He squeezed me tight, and I remember holding on for longer than usual for a reason I didn’t yet know. I’d go back and never let go if it meant he could still be here. If I could go back into that moment now, I’d sit him down and tell him everything. I’d even ask to hear all his stories again, especially the one about his dog Rusty. 

 

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Pop, I’d say. I’ve been thinking about you a lot recently. It’s been over seven years and I’m a junior in college. I graduated high school, went to my dream school, and now I’m studying abroad in Southern Italy for a semester. Can you believe that? Because I can’t. He used to always pronounce Italian like eye-talian and I can’t help but think about him asking about my eye-talian experience here. I’d tell him, it’s amazing, you’ll have to see it for yourself because I think you’d just about fall in love. 

Pop taught me how to eat the crabs we boiled straight from the bay and now I like to watch the fisherman bring in their daily catch in Marina Grande from my balcony at the university. In the mornings I drink my cappuccinos up there and watch the boats set off like clockwork. In the evenings, when the sky burns vibrant red like fire, they are soon to fleet back in. “Red skies at night, sailor’s delight. Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning,” I remember Pop saying one night on the boat.   

Hours after the boats retreat and the sun sets, loud music from the neighboring wedding venues echoes off the mountains and over the sea. I can’t help but think about our beach vacations when my dad and my uncles would put on concerts for us during late nights on the balconies. I’d beg them to play Taylor Swift, and I’d get up to sing along. Don’t worry, they didn’t stop once you died. I think it actually helped keep us together even more. One of the last things I showed you was the picture of the guitar dad got me for Christmas that year and now I get to play guitar with them too. The first year I got to play with them on vacation was amazing, keeping up with the rhythm and learning all of their classics. I wish you could have seen it because I’d learn any song you’d suggest. 

I always know the weddings are done when I see explosions of screaming colors over the water. You know, I always hated fireworks. Remember Fourth of July on the bow of your boat? I’d get so terrified they were going to fall on us I’d have to close my eyes, and I hated the loud noises. Now that I’m older I like fireworks because they remind me of those times I’ll never get back. 

 

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Morgan and Dad came with me to Italy in August to drop me off at school and our first meal in Sorrento was right on the marina. We had calamari and fried shrimp that still had their beady eyes, foods first introduced to me by you at tables looking over the bay. I don’t know if it was the salt-air, cigarettes, beer, or seafood, but I was convinced you were sitting cross-legged in the fourth chair, we all were. Since then, everything I do here has been about you. 

Sometimes I do a double take when walking through the tourist-filled streets when I catch a glimpse of an old guy with a fedora on, but I have to remember you’re not actually here and the seasonal shops are lined up with them throughout town. I swear they are almost exactly like the one you would wear, Dad even bought one while he was here. You wouldn’t believe how similar the two of you looked with it on. 

Being so far away from home can get really isolating, but it’s comforting that a place across the world can hold so many reminders of him, though each time I am left wondering about all the memories we could still be making if he was here.

 

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I haven’t been on a boat in so long, but here there are fishing boats, ferries, and cruise ships in the bay every day, making me miss my floating childhood memories more than usual. 

My friends and I went on a private boat tour in Sardinia last month and it reminded me just how much I loved cruising through the water and looking back at the shoreline to see the opposite point of view. I loved it when we’d sail out and anchor the boat together with the others from our club and make one big boat island that we’d jump off and swim around for the day. We used to jump in the murky water like it was a swimming pool. I wish I still had that fearlessness in me. I was young enough to still need to wear a life jacket, even though the straps would give me rub burn that the saltwater would irritate. Every year I’d swim out less than the year before, despite getting older and outgrowing my lifejacket that I so despised. One year I sat on the shore and watched Morgan, only three years older than me but with a lot more courage, swim all the way out to the barge that the fireworks would set off from with Uncle Ryan and Uncle Zach as I anxiously waited for their return. 

Our guides on our boat tour in Sardinia dropped the anchor in a marine protected cove where the water was crystal clear twenty feet down to the bottom. We were offered lifejackets, snorkels, and fins. The distance to the shore was right about where Pop used to drop his own anchor, but this was something I wished he could see for himself. Schools of fish with white specks swam through the brightest blue I have ever seen. We were warned of the jellyfish and sea urchins. I haven’t swam in open water since those days as a kid, but I didn’t let my fears hold me back. All of a sudden, my legs were hanging off the side and my hands were in the air. I saw the blue waters in full saturation surround myself. My newly adopted free spirit froze in the Mediterranean waters along with my lungs’ ability to function. While my limbs were still in working condition, they thrashed as if I was thrown into a shark infested bay, or worse, the murky Chesapeake. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest and leave my body at the bottom, only to be picked on by the speckled reef fish in the seagrass. I was so embarrassed, but maybe my place wasn’t in the sea, but back at the beach house with a balcony view where Pop was right the whole time. 

I was so disappointed in myself as I sat on the boat alone, shaking in a towel, while my friends snorkeled off the coast of an Italian island. But I always have been an observer. As a kid, I’d get so upset that Pop couldn’t come with us to the beach to see me boogie-boarding and building sandcastles, but now I wonder how much it might have hurt him to miss out on that. I’m sure he loved being able to drink his beer and smoke his cigarettes in peace among the sounds of the waves crashing and faint seagull calls, but having to miss out on his time with his granddaughters is an aspect I never thought of until now. 

 

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Even far away from the boats and the sea, Pop manages to find me. Over the Alps and through the countryside in Munich, Germany I kept wishing he was there, but there was no doubt he wasn’t. Somewhere down the lineage our family was from Germany, and I wish I could ask him more. There were signs with Ritter plastered across them like Smith or Miller is back in the states. I wonder if there’s still any trace of our bloodline here.  

I hope Pop was watching over because I think he’d be impressed by the amount of beer that was running through my body that weekend. I never thought I’d end up at Oktoberfest and I knew I’d probably never again, so the glass steins bigger than my face stayed full for two days straight. Almost all of my memories of Pop were with a tin can of Natural Light in his hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Now I see where the German in him came into play because me and my friends sat drinking all day in a beer hall while the guys in lederhosen couldn’t help their smoke drifting in our faces. Pop never let the smoke permeate our youth, but we could always still smell it on his breath. 

 

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My favorite trip so far has been Paris. The little girl inside of me was giggling the whole time like I used to. My boyfriend, still at school at home, flew out to see me. 

 I kept my girlish glow, but wore red lipstick, dresses, and high heels like I’d always dreamed of doing while going to the top of the Eiffel tower and seeing the Mona Lisa. I never thought I’d have the luxury of visiting The City of Love and certainly not with my college boyfriend over fall break. This is the kind of story that people make movies about and that’s told at weddings.  

I can’t believe you won’t be at my wedding, I want to say to Pop. I’m in my twenties now and it’s weird that talking about weddings and babies isn’t all that far away. I found someone who makes me think about those things and who makes me the happiest girl in the world, and I can’t even bring him home to you. You’d love him and he’s going to meet the rest of the family this Christmas, at the party you should be at. 

 

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Today, I didn’t have classes because it’s All Saint’s Day. Everyone in Italy takes the day off to mourn their passed loved ones. I’ve been really homesick this week so I’m glad I got a day off just to sleep, but I ended up thinking about how different life is now and how different things are going to be when I get home. My mom’s moving to upstate New York so I’m moving in with Dad. His house looks a lot different now because he’s done so many renovations, many that me and Morgan helped with. He said he wanted us to learn the same skills from our dad that you taught him, which is the only reason I stuck it through for as long as I did. Maybe I’m adapting to the culture because I ended up thinking about you today anyway. 

I miss home and the Pennsylvania seasons. The changing leaves skip over Southern Italy.  It’s just beginning to get chilly after the sun sets and some people are still going to the beach. I missed Halloween and now all the shops are getting decorated for Christmas. Christmas time is the hardest for me because it’ll be the eighth one without you and it hurts the same each time. I still can’t believe Christmas in seventh grade was the last time I saw you when now I’m across the world and half-way done college. 

Greif has always been hard for me, probably because I am the most emotional person I know. Pop’s death was my first experience with grief, and it changed how I handle it now. I have a tough time regulating my emotions because it’s all or nothing and nothing has been worse than losing Pop. I never got closure and that’s what eats me alive. I still think about how I cried so much that the January air burned my face for weeks after.  

Thank you, Pop, for getting me through this semester. This is my closure: getting over my fears and accepting my faults. I swam in the open ocean and breathed in a lifetime of secondhand smoke just to realize that leaving the only things I have ever known brought me closer to home.