I hadn’t been home in days, and I was pleased to see the sun was out. The mist that hung over the street when I arrived the night before was thankfully gone. Looking through my kitchen window, I noticed traffic was slow and the noise from the street below was muffled and sparse. It felt like the kind of morning in which I could finally get some work done.
My breakfast of oatmeal and walnuts was intentionally light. Not as light, perhaps, as coffee and toast, but for a two-hundred-twenty-pound, six-foot-four man in his forties, it was Spartan. I stretched, showered, and sat down at my computer, expecting a productive day.
A notification about a note from my parents flashed on screen, or rather, a note from my father, who, over the course of their fifty-year marriage had become a stifling voice for his wife, my mother.
Why I opened that message befuddles me.
“We have just returned from what was probably our last trip,” he wrote. “We’re growing old and won’t be long for this earth. It’s too bad you don’t understand that family is more important than anything else in life. It is what’s most important. Your mother and I think about you, even if you don’t send news.”
In a few more lines, he rambled about his health, his golf game, and his friends who were either old or dead. Then, the clincher, “We care about you even if you don’t ask how we are. We know you’re busy, but maybe this year you’ll visit us.”
My parents are in perfect health. Fully retired, they spend their time and money traveling the world. “Parents must love their children even if they don’t love them back,” my father said while I was growing up. He always accused me, his youngest child, of being arrogant, unloving, and aloof.
Then, I noticed the postscript: “In case you are wondering, your mother and I are not spending Christmas with your brother and his children because we’re taking a cruise.”
I slowly closed the lid of my laptop and set it aside before finishing my coffee. The tone was familiar enough that I should have laughed, but I knew its effect on me would linger throughout the day, like a reminder that my family’s love had always been wrapped in quiet expectation and reproach.
I needed to get out. I needed to experience a different reality.
After washing the dishes, I changed into a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a collar, a bit overdressed, perhaps, for a walk to the beach. I closed the door behind me and double-stepped my way barefoot down the stairs and through the courtyard into the alley, almost tripping on the curb outside. Passers-by were devouring their ice cream or indulging in breakfast burritos from the Mexican eatery nearby.
I strode to the grill and ordered a swordfish taco with plenty of extra hot sauce, cradling it in aluminum foil before making my way to the boardwalk a few blocks away. When I got there, I sat on the edge of a large rock and dangled my legs over the side, my toes barely touching the sand when I stretched. A group of seagulls screeched demandingly. They flew almost within arm’s reach as I unwrapped my meal.
Something about eating fish in front of the birds disturbed me. I threw them some chips, hoping to quiet them, but they became raucous and even more daring. A white and grey little monster hopped angrily close on his webbed feet and gnarly pink legs. I felt him staring at me, his dark eyes gleaming deviously.
A group of Heermann’s gulls suddenly hovered like an ominous black cloud in the sky above my head. Their dark bodies menacingly collided with the solitary gull that had made his way to within a few feet of me on the wooden rail. “Mine, mine, mine,” they squawked through their Halloween orange beaks. They reminded me of my parents.
I threw them the rest of my taco and stepped onto the sand. The ocean’s gentle rhythm was a stark contrast to the cacophony of the gulls as they devoured what was left of my flour tortilla and pulled its contents to pieces, aluminum foil wrapping and all. I made my way to the far end of the boardwalk and took a seat on a bench near the swings.
A group of parents was playing with some children there. A fortyish-year-old man in loafers and board shorts stood beside me. He was apparently waiting for someone. His wife arrived carrying a small plastic shopping bag.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I bought you a shirt,” she said, “It was on sale.”
“Why did you do that?” he said. “You know I don’t need any more shirts.” He stepped away toward the swings.
“You’re never happy when I do anything,” she called after him.
The man glanced briefly back over his shoulder. “There was no reason to get me a shirt I don’t need.” Turning again, he walked toward a child playing joyfully by himself.
“You had better come along,” he told the boy. “Your mother wants to get you some juice milk.
“I don’t want juice milk,” the child said without looking up. He was probably four or five years old.
“But you like juice milk,” the man said. “Why don’t you want some?”
The boy was obviously not listening. He was absorbed in studying a line of red fire ants traveling along a wooden banister.
“You can have some cookies. They’re good. You like cookies,” the man said. He had raised his voice ever so slightly. He was a big man, about my height and weight. Now standing beside him, his wife looked like a small paper doll.
She pulled a cookie from her bag and held it out to her son. It was a large sandwich cookie covered with powdered sugar. “This has a crust like pie,” she said. “You don’t have to eat the middle.”
The little boy got to his feet. Leaving the ants marching along on their business, he dragged his feet through the sand as he shuffled head down toward his mom.
“Take the cookie and give me a kiss,” she cajoled.
The boy grabbed the cookie. His father put an arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“Now, son,” he said, “give your mother a kiss.”
The boy closed his fist around the cookie and ran back to the banister where he had been playing. Seemingly without a care in the world, he dropped his treat and sat in the sand, watching the ants voraciously devour a dead spider.
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