Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2022

Finding Ragtime

“It’s the water,” I explained. “It draws me.” When a child is born in a port city, the sounds and smells of the ocean environment permeate the existence of the tiny human, perhaps even before birth itself. The sound of waves lapping the shoreline pushing the mix of salt, iodine, and magnesium into the ever-lifting oceanic air become a staple of existence, branding the consciousness with a marker it can never escape. And like juvenile salmon, once marked, the voyage into the world will have a nagging gravity drawing the fry back to its origin, back to its beginning. At least that’s how it was for me. After being born in Port Angeles mere blocks from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I spent my first six weeks breathing the marine air of Port Angeles, Washington while being cared for by a kind nurse who acted as a foster parent.  My parents decided they weren’t ready to be parents again.  They were probably right. My mother was 17 and had already relinquished a child for adoption, so when my f