I said it when people tried to change the subject.
I refused to let my daughter become a silence everybody politely stepped around.
Sixteen years passed that way.
Then, last July, I was walking the boardwalk in Ocean City.
Crowded, hot, the middle of the afternoon.
I had stopped there almost by accident.
I bought a bottle of water and walked without any real destination.
Families moved around me.
Kids carried ice cream.
Music spilled from an arcade.
The air smelled like sunscreen, salt, and fried food.
Then a woman came toward me with a knitted bag over her shoulder.
I stopped so fast the man behind me walked into my shoulder.
« Sorry, » he muttered.
I barely heard him.
I KNEW where the wrong stitch was near the bottom.
I’d cried over that mistake in my kitchen in 2008 and finished the bag anyway because she wanted it for the beach that weekend.
