Day 119

This morning was hard. I woke up early and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I had been dreaming, but I don’t remember anything specific about my dream. Only that when my eyes first opened, I thought I heard footsteps, Dad’s footsteps pounding through the house. My eyes popped open and I actually waited a few moments for him, as if I expected him to walk into my room and ask me what my son wanted for breakfast. And then I remembered, it couldn’t possibly be him. I got up to walk — as always — but my legs felt heavy. I haven’t slept much in months, but this was more than fatigue that seemed to weigh me down. When I got back to the house, I forced myself to do laundry and get breakfast ready. I even drove to the store to buy lunch, but when I got back I didn’t feel like doing anything. While my son worked on his puzzle, I curled up on my bed where I drifted in and out of sleep, my mind toggling between several unsettling dreams — again dreams I don’t remember except for one clip. My son was a toddler. I saw him as if from a distance through a pane of glass and a voice I didn’t recognize kept telling I wasted my time when my son was little. That I should have done more with him. I should have paid better attention to the little things. I woke up feeling even worse.

I didn’t want to go the Treasure Beach on the weekends. I feared it would be too crowded. But my son begged. It was the only beach he’d consider going to and I didn’t want him spending the day watching television. I also knew I needed to get out of the house. I needed to do something. So I agreed, with the caveat that if it were crowded we’d have to go elsewhere. On the wa,y we stopped at a drug store to pick up batteries for my son’s remote control boat. I paid in cash. In the summer, we always pay in cash with the money we’ve had to set aside all year since neither of us gets a pay check in July or August. We treat it like an allowance so we don’t over spend. But when I haded the woman a ten dollar bill she asked me if I had any change. Since I was in my swim suit and not my shorts, I had no coins. It was then I noticed the bright yellow sign taped to the plexiglass between me and the cashier, the sign that asked customers to please play with credit or debt cards since we are currently experience a coin shortage. Well what do you know, one more consequence of Trump’s bungling of the virus. The U.S. Mint has slowed coin production due to the virus, and with people staying home, they haven’t been spending coins which in essence has taken them out of circulation. Since there were no coins in the woman’s cash machine, she started rummaging around in her own purse. I apologized for the inconvenience I caused, but as the words were leaving my mouth, I questioned why I was apologizing. It certainly wasn’t my fault. But the woman seemed to agree. Handing me nickels and dimes she said, “Oh, it’s not you. I blame Trump.” And I smiled, as I responded, “I couldn’t agree more. It’s as if he wants the country to fall apart.”

The Treasure Beach was not as crowded as I expected but they were diligently checking cars to make sure people had stickers. They weren’t selling any day passes. And if you were from out of town then sent you home. Despite the lack of crowds, there were several large groups of people gathered closely together. It unsettled me to see. Even my son commented, “Aren’t there too many people over there. And they aren’t wearing masks. That isn’t safe.” No it wasn’t, and so we put our stuff down further away from the water than usual so as to keep more than 6 six feet away from everyone. But we only sat on our towels to eat lunch and then we dove into the water and swam across the inlet. There wasn’t anyone on the other side, so it was safer. We didn’t have to worry about anyone getting too close to us. We brought a bucket and my son brought his net. Together we fished for minnows — he used the net, I used my feet. There are many more minnows in the water than there were last month and the bucket filled up quickly. I also caught a crab with my hands. My son put it in the bucket to see if it would eat any of the fish. It did not. 

While my son studied the sea life, I sat at the edge of the water and thought about Dad. He and Mom used to really enjoy bringing their pool noodles to the beach. They’d walk down the shore a bit then enter the water. They’d rest their backs against the noodles and hold on with their arms letting the current carry them. “It’s my own Lazy River,” Mom used to say, a reference to the ride at water parks. Over and over they’d drift, reach the end of the beach and repeat on warm sunny days. Dad always looked happy, relaxed, as if there was no where else in the world he wanted to be.

I also remembered the time when my son was about three. Dad was holding him in the water and he took Dad’s baseball cap off and thew it into the water. It sunk faster than I’ve ever see clothing sink and the current carried it swiftly away because even though I tried, I couldn’t recover it. It was one of only three or four times Dad every got mad at my son. But unlike when he used to get made at me when I was kid, anger that could last days, his anger at my son dissipated within seconds. He got my son to apologize — my son still feels guilty about it — and then it was over. They were friends again.

But the image of Dad drifting kept swirling through my mind for the rest of the day. 

By the time we left, my son was tired. We swan back and forth across the inlet many times. It was the most exercise he had gotten in days. And when we left he told me, “When we get home I need to rest. You exhausted me today.” Once, many years ago, Dad told me if I had a kid I’d finally understand what it meant to be tired. I guess he was wrong on this one. G3 still tires out before me when it comes to physical activity. In all my life, I’ve only ever met one person whose stamina matches mine.

My son did a great deal of work on the New Jersey puzzle. When I spoke to my spouse this morning, after she read my post from yesterday, she told me that my friend is normal. Most people put puzzles together and then take them apart. It’s my son and I who are anomalies. Maybe the whole crumbling of something you spent hours on is too much of a metaphor for my life. Too often I’ve worked on things that didn’t materialize, projects or endeavors that didn’t succeed as I had hoped. As a result, I can’t bring myself to undo puzzles, a problem I suppose my son has gotten from me. Anyway, after dinner we worked on the puzzle some more. My son wanted to listen to 80’s music, songs from my childhood, songs that dredged up more memories of Dad: him parking on metro as we listed to “Faith” by George Michael, him singing along in the car to Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean, him driving me home from my high school entrance exam while we listened to “Tell me Lies” from Fleetwood Mac. 

It still really upsets me that I never got to say goodbye.