This Is for You

An essay

Photo by Laszlo Oveges on Unsplash

On the day we went to the mangrove island, you asked me to get into the kayak and go with you to see a coral reef. It was our last day in Puerto Rico. We could leave the kids behind with your parents, you said. You already had the snorkeling gear in the boat.

The water on this side of the island was as clear as the sky, so I said, “Isn’t this gorgeous enough?” But I could see that hungry look in your eye. You’re always pulling me toward the edges of things.

I climbed in, and we paddled to the far side of the island where the current picked up.

“Look at that,” you said. We were over the reef now.

The choppy surface distorted the shapes beneath us. We pointed out colors breaking through: ripples of purple, flashes of orange, streaks of electric blue. We had two snorkels and two pairs of goggles, but the current was strong. One of us would have to stay back and steady the kayak. It was clear it should be you.

I didn’t want to go in without you.

“Get out of the boat, Elizabeth,” you said. “I’ll keep it steady.”

You’re rarely so firm with me. I was afraid—afraid of the wild part of the wilderness, of things I couldn’t see, of having to instruct my body to perform tasks it usually does on its own, like breathing. I was afraid of entering a place that hadn’t invited me. But I put on the goggles and slid into the water. One hand clung to the kayak; the rest of me floated. I pushed my face through the skin of the ocean and left this world—left you, left sound, left light—behind. There was a whoosh of silence and then a humming fullness.

I hovered over a garden, a forest. I was suspended over indigo trees and garnet bushes, over persimmon fish darting through clay-colored caverns. Creatures of cobalt blues and shimmering teals and sunbeam yellows shot and scattered under me. They moved with intention, as if controlled by commands I could not hear.

I was a blimp over a pulsing city. I was the tourist moving slowly on the sidewalk. I was awkward and looming and so aware of myself. I don’t know how to explain this to you exactly, and I feel silly even expressing the thought, but I sensed that I was unwanted in the middle of such buzzing purpose. I felt like I was somehow getting in the way of beauty.

* * *

On my fifth birthday, my mother drove me to the city park—the one with the green metal slide that burnt my thighs, and the swings tucked into the woods, and the brown pavilion I liked to pretend was a cabin. She unbuckled me and grabbed my hand. I asked if she would push me on the swing.

As we walked by the pavilion, I noticed it had been set up for a child’s birthday party. A purple table cloth hung over a picnic table. Pink balloons tugged at their strings in the breeze. On one end of the table, gifts piled up into a heap, and on the other end a cake sat with unlit candles. Children in paper party hats chased each other in circles around their mothers. A poster of a tailless donkey was taped to a wall.

“Look, Mom,” I said. “Someone’s having a birthday party at the park!’

“This is for you, Elizabeth!”

Even now, when my mother tells this story, I can see that the deep pleasure of this moment has never left her: bearing witness to my revelation that all this abundance, which moments before had belonged to someone else, was meant for me.

* * *

I raised my head and came back into the world of clouds and seabird-screeches and nose-breathing. You pulled me into the boat.

“How was it?” you asked.

“I can’t believe it really exists,” I said.

On our ride back around the mangroves, we were quiet. I was still thinking about all that abundance, about a world too wonderful for me.

“Look,” I thought quietly, something like a prayer, “someone is having a party.”

You didn’t say it, couldn’t have known to have said it, but the words came as close as a mother’s whisper.

“This is for you.”

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Elizabeth Harwell, essayist and children's book author, makes her home outside Atalanta with her husband and three children. These days, her stories find their way into inboxes through her Substack, The Things I Carry.