I cried, hands in a praying position, as I watched my father fly away. He was parasailing, the parachute floating above us, tied to a speedboat. The Caribbean Sea seemed to me like the dark waters of the Nordic Ocean. My father, I feared, would never come back. Ever. My tears tasted like the sea. The sand felt like little razors, exfoliating my cheeks. I rubbed my pudgy hands together and cried again, pointing towards the sky, "¡Mi papi!”That was when I learned what it meant to feel like you don’t have any air. Even on the shore, where the breeze hits harder, my chest heaved without pause. I was choking on my tears.My mother looked at me, her eyebrows stuck together. “He’ll be back, mami. He’ll be back.” She rubbed my back and watched as the horizon became larger in my eyes. We sat amidst silence, my small whimpers, and the waves. Then my mother approached me, her voice softer, “Mami,” she said, “perspective is the key. You see your dad up in the sky and you think he’s flying away, but he’s simply floating like a bird, being the clouds for you.”