The pelican at my elbow

The pelican at my elbow

By Cindy Bailey, Waynesburg, PA

No Thai, Indian or Vietnamese cuisine.
No mini golf or bumper cars.

No tack shops or "upcycled" clothing stores.

No swimsuit shopping!

Beach combing was moderate and I didn't even have to share my unbroken shells with anyone.
No fussing around about applying sunblock or combing out our hair or taking a bath, even if we did spend the day in the water.
No one forgot her underwear. (Annie)
Or had to put up with someone else borrowing hers. (Julie)

We did what we wanted when we wanted to do it. Or not. (Cindy and Bob)

   It was the first beach trip us Old Folk took without any Younger Persons of Interest in tow.

   And the undertow of that fact disoriented us and within an hour of getting in the car, we were thinking maybe it was a bad idea and we should go home and work in the yard and really, all the computers needed updated anyhow.

   I kept thinking of a day on the beach over 15 years ago when Julie, then about eight years old, and I were hoarding shells in buckets. We were having such fun that we didn’t even notice we were being followed, until Bob called out, “Look behind you!” About a foot away were two pelicans that were under the impression that we had seafood in those buckets.

  Time, I was thinking in the car with my now senior citizen husband, is like those pelicans, right at your elbow, trying to rob you of precious things.

   But, we soldiered on, wanting to see how this vacation would all turn out.

   As we gingerly stepped out on the sand that first evening, where all these young parents were working so hard to keep everyone happy so their kids could take these memories along with them into life, I'll admit we felt like beached salmon, used up by our own years of parenting, waiting for the seabirds to pick at our bones, well it wasn't that bad....

   But an experience is what you make it, we said to ourselves, so by the next morning, over second cups of coffee, we resolved to step back, enjoy our freedom and try to see things as they really are and not as recent empty nesters tend to romanticize every little thing.
   We'd see a toddler with her hair standing up on her head and look at each other and say simultaneously, "Annie"! And there was this young dad who had a giant, inflated sea turtle strapped to his back, reminiscent of the alligator Julie spotted and cajoled us into buying in a beach shop once. We figured on "forgetting" it in our motel room so we didn't have to drag it on the plane, but that didn't work out so well. For several years, we always managed to find a way to pack up that green wonder, and Bob dragged the girls around in the water on it–after we exhausted ourselves blowing the doggone thing up. I think that ol' boy (the alligator, not my husband) is still in the cellar somewhere, a shriveled skin, beaten into submission, languishing like me and Bob, among the remnants of two childhoods. But I digress.

   As our beach day wore on, you could see the moms and dads deflating like that alligator, and we were both thinking, "That was fun while it lasted, but it sure was exhausting." And you could see the kids getting crankier as the sun slipped behind the horizon; one dad looked at us with desperation as his little girl sobbed over a pink ball that had floated away unnoticed with the tide. "Some other little girl can play with it," only made her wail louder–the type of memory she will repeat as a teen when she wants to make him feel bad about something. The type of memory you spend your seven precious, expensive vacation days trying to avoid.
   And sitting in our lawn chairs, snoozing and reading (guess who was snoozing), our feet in the tide, an unspoken sigh of relief wafted around us that the day-to-day parenting job had come to a satisfying conclusion at our house, through the grace of God, who watched over us all, including us befuddled parents who still don't have the answers.
   Because we couldn't keep them from hurts and bad influences anymore that we could keep Julie from that nasty jellyfish on Sanabel Island. And we still can't. 

   And so we said private prayers of thanksgiving and saw each other in a renewed light, realizing that without the two of us working every together single day and hour to steer our wobbling craft and bring them up in they way that we thought they should go, it really could have been a ship wreck.

   But on our last day, the nostalgia returned, and wanting to take part of the experience back home with us from the sea shell store, I noticed Rob's eyes got a little glassy. Because most every parent takes their kid in that store to make sure they get to bring home at least a few perfect sea specimens from the area, although they usually want the dried baby octopus for $12.99. Anyhow, by the time he found me in the bookstore, his eyes were shining because he had a present for me: Four carefully wrapped starfish to replace the one I was mourning over from a long ago beach trip. I had put it in the flower bed, and some flat-footed deer stomped around that night and massacred it. 

   And you see why I love him (Bob, not the deer).
   We packed up a little early in search of roads not taken by the masses, discovering a small public beach, where a middle-aged couple sat with books under an umbrella in the town of "Slaughter." Despite it's unfortunate name, the community there devoted itself to rescuing the endangered horseshoe crabs, which had been crushed into fertilizer by the millions as they came to that beach to spawn each spring.  Some 10 years later, the crabs, whose faces you'd think only their mothers could love, now flourish. And somehow all this this care of a creature so formerly unloved touched me.
   Then we hiked to a tiny lighthouse, which still stands inspiring people, though its light went out a generation ago. We found an inlet full of blue crabs and watched them knocking each other off the rocks, just because they were, well, crabby. Fortunately we didn't have to catch any and put them in a Styrofoam cup to take home.
   And truly, there was something liberating about not having to explain why little baby crabs die if you take them from their homes and mothers.

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