A Memoir by Rebecca Suzuki

My sister was allergic to formula as an infant, and her marshmallow skin would break out with itchy red bumps. The dermatologist didn’t want to medicate her unless he really had to, so told my mother to try natural remedies first. “Dip her in the ocean at dusk,” he instructed her. “The warm salt water will help her skin heal.” And beginning that day, every day at dusk the four of us would walk to the beach together. My mother slowly pushing the stroller with my sister in it, me holding my father’s hand, the sun slowly melting into the sky with its pinks and purples. Once we arrived at the quiet beach, my mother carefully scooped my sister out of the stroller, undressed her, and handed her to my father, who held her gently at his chest. He walked slowly toward the water, the rhythmic waves calling them inside. He felt the sand turning into a soft pad, then the water lapping at his feet, ankles. He waded until the warm water was up to his thighs and cupped his daughter’s warm, peachy head with one hand and the rest of her small body with the other. He looked into her face, her eyes searching and searching the sky. Trying to take in the world. He slowly lowered her into the ocean, and she kicked and flailed her arms, responding to the new sensations she felt all over her body. He chuckled and watched, making sure to not let the water get on her face, hoping that the ocean would heal her as the doctor promised. My mother and I sat together on a blanket facing the water. I sat on top of her lap, feeling the heat emanating from her skin, her breaths moving strands of my hair back and forth. Her arms were wrapped around me and her chin rested gently on top of my head. As the orange sun dipped lower, the pinks and purples became more prominent, like someone dripped paint into the clouds. I watched my father’s measured tender movements in the water. The ocean was endless, and so was he. When he came back to us with my sister, my mother wrapped her in a fresh, fluffy towel and her eyelids drooped over like honey. We walked home slowly, the last glow of the sun stroking our back.

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Rebecca Suzuki is the author of When My Mother Is Most Beautiful, winner of the Loose Translation Prize and published by Hanging Loose Press. She writes creative nonfiction in a mixture of forms and languages, and her work has been published in River Teeth, Identity Theory, KGB Bar Lit, and more. She is also a translator from Japanese to English and a faculty lecturer of English at Queens College, CUNY. She is currently working on a hybrid memoir that attempts to weave together complicated family histories, the disappearance of her father, her immigration to New York City from a seaside town in Japan at nine years old with her mother and sister, and how all of that has shaped them, 24 years later. She lives in Queens, NY with her cat.