Matthew Lyle Landsman

A note for my honorary daughter…Love, Daddy Matty

It wasn’t the surf with its salty foam, nor was it the sunset, the likes of which I’d ever known…

It wasn’t the end of a sleepy afternoon or a drive to the shore…

But still my heart was stolen by the sea.

It was about hearts abandoned, about feelings stranded. It was about lingered disappointment and roles denied.

It was a theft of the kindest sort, a smile, a sigh, a request, a
plea…and there was that smile, a head on my shoulder, that truth, the
chorus of the Pacific’s roar. And there and then my heart was stolen by
that shore…

And of some of life’s failures, I cannot understand. For some of
life’s mercies, I can only feel eternal gratitude. In soft
conversations where joy ought to have lived, I heard of the need for my
heart to give a little of what I am, a friend, a shoulder, a pool of
knowledge, of kindness, of honesty…all those things a daddy should give
naturally.
So arm in arm at the end of the day, a prayer answered, a plea
fulfilled…an overdue longing to be accepted, appreciated, and just
loved. I for the lack of my son, she for the absence of a proverbial
dad…A quiet theft carried off by her misty hazel eyes, by the honesty
shared, by a soul’s muffled cries. While winter lingered, and spring
teasingly debuted, I was caught off guard by the approaching dusk,
mugged by the ocean, there and then my heart was stolen by the sea.
I will do my best to slip away to that town by the shore, to hope for a
smile when I’m greeted at their door. I will return when I can to the
scene of the crime…to the reaches and beaches, the salt and the trees,
the rutted road that leads to my honorary daughter, the one who stole
my heart by the sea…to that coastal town where I long to be.

Matthew Lyle Landsman

Spring 2008