The first time I ever saw an ocean was when I was in college and my Religion and Life Fellowship (RALF) group went on a "retreat" to Europe. I was a student at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, NE. We drove to Chicago and flew to Baltimore, then over the Atlantic Ocean to Luxembourg. It was also the first time I had ever been in an airplane.

Wading in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Italy during that retreat was the first time I actually got close enough to smell and see and feel the saltwater of an ocean or a sea.

I lived in the Boston area for three years, 1987-1990, and made it a point to visit the ocean LOTS of times then. People who live there sometimes take it for granted, and don't seem to appreciate it as much as people who aren't accustomed to it do.

Last summer my husband and son and I went back to Boston on vacation. My son had been born in Boston in 1989, and had visited there again in 1992, but didn't remember the ocean from when he was there when he was real little.

We went deep-sea fishing on the Atlantic Ocean from Gloucester while we were there last summer. It was a lot of fun, and it was fun being a part of that experience with my son. He got to see the hospital he had been born in (Brigham and Women's), and the house we lived in (in Malden) when we first brought him home from the hospital after his birth. He identifies with Boston now, whereas before when we talked about his being born in Boston, it didn't really have much meaning for him. Now he is proud of that fact.