"All that tenderness coming out of the sea..."

I'm reading Love by Toni Morrison and it's really incredible. It's a look at the fiery relationships that exist within a family of Black American royalty. When the sole patriarch dies, his loyal women (wife, assistant, granddaughter and lovers) are left to fend for themselves and their entitlement to his fortune. The loving father, husband and employer always took care of everyone to the best of his ability, except the absence of a sound will. But there was something missing, an emptiness within that allowed him to fill it with a too-young wife (11 when they were married) and countless affairs. I haven't finished the book, but one sentence has had me reeling, when describing the man and his new wife parting from a lover's embrace in the waves of the sea, Morrison's narrator describes her fascination/heartbreak. The narrator notes that it must have been something else that brought tears to her eyes not "all that tenderness coming out of the sea..." What a beautiful sentence! To think that tenderness is even bred in the sea! And then to be able to release it upon the world? Why would the sea do that? What a wondrous and giving sea. I think I should visit seas more often. Every girl should try a little tenderness...

It only takes a sentence.

XOXO,

T