The Sea

"Come on, Mummy!"  She calls to me as she paddles in the waves. "Let's go further in to the sea and pretend we are splashing in muddy puddles!"

I am immobilised; not through fear of the water, but from the certainty that I would not be able to stop walking in to it, until I could go no further and all life was but a speck on the landscape to me.

"Not today, sweetheart" I say. "Not today."