On her first trip to the beach,
my daughter says the seagulls sound like a baby,
crying.

Early one morning, I take a photo of Ruthie standing
at the edge of the sand looking towards the ocean.
She’s wearing her light pink shorts and her long sleeve swim shirt.
The ends of her hair curl like mine.

I wish I could see what her face looks like,
though I know, because I’ve stood this way too,
looking towards clouds and waves
before the beach gets crowded,
all the families who have come for respite, for connection
before their coolers and their loud music, their plastic toys.
There is something holy about feeling so small
looking towards something larger.

Decades ago in another landscape,
the seagulls in the parking lot of the Liberty Plaza
picking on crumbs of Baskin Robbins cones left behind
standing in the puddles that always seemed to be there.
The draw of concrete and trash,

or spaciousness and a respite on the way to Geneva or Lake Erie,
how any place can be a home, a habitat,
the way my childhood centered around shopping trips
to Fashion Bug or dinners at Antone’s
where I could drink one bottle of Black Cherry New York Seltzer,
and taste the life that was waiting for me.
Someplace bigger, someplace different,
somewhere where I could be an I,
not immediately thought of as someone’s daughter.

And here now, watching my daughter and the seagulls,
I think, this is what it is to be a mother,
to watch who you love turn towards something else,
ready to drink in the world.

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Image: “Hazy Horizon” by Alex J. Tunney