I'm not sure I could ever adequately explain the heartbreak that runs through my blood and that of my family over the whole oil spill crisis. I'm sure some people are sick of hearing about it. I realize it's been going on for a while, but I can't get it off my heart. You see, I'm heartbroken on both sides of it. I'm from Texas and Louisiana. Every summer we came home from Jakarta to beaches. My grandparents own a little beach house against the gulf and every year, without fail, we would go down there. Summers were spent throwing sand, trying to ninja-kick waves, finding sand dollars in the sand. We'd go out at low tide and build sandcastles where the water would wash them away in just a few hours. We'd lie down on our backs and stare up at the sky and wonder how in the world something so magnificent could possibly exist. My grandparents would tell us stories of when they were younger, and my sisters and I would make bikinis out of sand. I'd be the buried mermaid while they ran up and down the beach, until finally Buck sniffed me out of the ground. When evening rolled around we'd all sit out on the porch. My parents would have a glass of wine with grandma and grandpa, and us kids would sit out with glasses of sweet tea and a deck of cards and we'd just enjoy being there. The beach has always been what summer was to me. The saltwater and sand and coconut sunscreen are the smells of childhood.

My father is a drilling engineer, which basically means that he's in charge of drilling for oil. He's been a drilling engineer since before I was born--nearly 50 years of drilling underwater for the things we Americans--up until now--have mostly taken for granted. When people hear this about my dad, especially now, they usually scoff at him and call him some sort of tycoon that is out to destroy our natural resources at the gain of a few bucks. My dad's gotten used to it. When I was younger, his face would fall and he'd offer a soft smile and take their words without much of a fight. He went through a stage where he defended himself constantly, and that didn't help either. Now he just nods and goes on his way, leaving it to his daughters to defend him when we're out with him. It breaks my heart when people assume this about my father, and since the oil spill, there's been great reluctance in my family to even admit what my father does for a living. But you see, the truth is, when I look around me at all of the faces of people devastated by this tragedy, none of them convey more heartbreak than my father's.

My dad got into the oil business when he realized what was going on, pure and simple. He was a simple farmer before, but one day he read a news article about how we get our oil. He realized immediately how dangerous the practice was. My mother and he are both incredibly protective of the environment. My mom tells me that they had nightly conversations about their responsibilities to fix the environment, and my dad just simply had the issue on his heart. So he went back to school and studied to be a drilling engineer. He studied with the goal to make safer practices for drilling oil, and in fact, his whole goal was to figure out how to do away with the process in general. He doesn't think drilling for oil is the best way; he just doesn't know another way. He's built his life on trying to make sure that his men are as efficient and as careful as is humanly possible. My father loves the environment, and especially our oceans. He used to tell me that he couldn't wait for the day when we'd figure out how to do this whole thing without hurting the things around us because he couldn't wait to retire. But he told me very clearly that he wasn't going to retire until this problem was fixed.

I called him the day I heard about the oil spill. He was crying as he picked up the phone. This is a man I've only seen cry once in my entire life, and that was the day that he met his granddaughter. But he was crying. He just kept repeating, over and over and over again, "oy vey, Ang, oy vey." My dad's not Jewish, but he's picked up that phrase. He started muttering words in Indonesian, and I listened to my Dad, who had always been the strongest person I've ever met, so heartbroken on the other side of the phone. He started talking about all the ramifications. My father is brilliant. He is incredibly smart, and before the news ever started picking up on how massive this was, my father was telling me. He told me about all the animals that would die, about the way it would affect the seafood industry in the states. He said that the economic downfall for Louisiana would be massive, and for Florida, it would be big. He said that there would be oil in the air. That people would have to move from the beach and would lose everything they had... There would be no reason to maintain towns on the shores. People would lose out massively. Hurricane season will come, he said, and when it does, you're going to have a lot of oil flying around. This oil crisis will affect every single facet of our lives, he told me. I didn't want to believe him, but the longer it lasts, the more I know how right he was. This is going to take decades to rebuild, and even then, it's not going to be the same.

I'm heartbroken for my father, who has spent more than half his life working to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen. I'm heartbroken for the looks he will and is already getting. For the guilt he has for not being able to fix it. I'm heartbroken for my sisters and I, who have just seen our childhood destroyed. When we go down to Louisiana now, there isn't going to be the smell of coconut sunscreen, of saltwater, of sand. My daughter won't be able to be buried like a mermaid in the sand. She won't be able to lay down on the shore and look up at the skies and wonder how something could ever be that beautiful. My daughter will hear stories, just like we did. Stories of childhoods on the beach and of all the fun we had. But the difference is that she won't be able to experience it herself. There's nothing like a Louisianan beach. At least not in our family. The saltwater runs through our family and unites us. Where do you go when everything that's home to you is destroyed? Is it even home anymore?