Sun, Salt, And Sand

To You,

I told you I wouldn’t write about it. That it was too personal a thing to put out there. But I’ve spent the last week watching my sunburn peel away and I’m afraid the memory of that day will eventually fade, too. There are no photos of us during those few hours. There is no proof the day ever existed to anybody but us. And like many other things I have written about here, my words become substitutes for events I hold dear. Writing it down makes it real somehow. I’m able to put things into shape here. Solidify things. Put them into context and put them into a linear frame. Compare them to other experiences I’ve had. I can’t explain it better than that. So I hope you understand why I’m choosing to break this one promise.

I picked the island for that day because it was the only thing I could really control about our time together. On the North Shore, it is one of the few places I can still go without feeling haunted by some fragment of the past. Despite the fact I was always brought there during the most turbulent times of my childhood, the island has never failed to supply me with enough healing energy and good memories to get me through until the next crisis. I consider the place magical. If a new memory of us together was going to be made, it had to be there. No other place would’ve done. And judging by the beautiful weather and the fact we could practically stare down the entire length of coastline, I would say the right choice was made. If you have to make a memory, it might as well be a clear one.

I remember us walking down the length of the beach looking for a spot of sand we could call our own. It seemed like we walked for hours; like we didn’t know what we were looking for, but would know instantly when we saw it. Eventually, we settled on a patch of beach further away from the crowd, inbetween two women with a little girl and an older couple with lawn chairs and coolers. You spread out the beach towels you brought and for the longest time we just sat there talking and watching the tide slowly creep back in. After a while, you pulled your sunglasses down over your eyes and rolled onto your stomach. “This is so nice,” you said, almost exhaling the words. “For once I don’t have to listen to ‘Mommy, I need a drink. Or Mommy I need to go to the bathroom.'” I told you to relax as long as you wanted. In a whirlwind ten day trip back to see friends and family, this was the first day I hadn’t made any plans with anybody except you. I had told the family I would be unreachable for most of the day. I stuck to that.

After a while, I rolled onto my stomach, too, and looked at you. With your sunglasses on, I couldn’t tell if your eyes were open or closed, but your words came out soft and slow, mixing with the sound of the waves breaking a short distance from our feet. I could tell you were totally relaxed and it was during this time everything that needed to be said came out naturally, without any trepidation from either side. Our fingers tangled together in the sand, maybe subconsciously stopping at wedding bands, then curling around each other again. My hand found the small of your back and rested there for a while. After twenty-five years of knowing each other, this felt like the first time we had been able to relax with the idea of an “us”. And yet we could acknowledge our respective obligations without any kind of remorse. Our timing has always sucked, we admitted. But there was little we could do but wait things out. Things are what they are, we said. And I told you I was a patient man. You told me you were patient, too. Amazingly enough, we were somehow comforted by this.

Later we ate at a roadside seafood place just down the road from the beach and laughed as I scrambled around trying to catch lids and napkins blown off the picnic table by the ocean breeze. The conversation continued, light and shockingly easy. Inside, I felt none of the nervous energy I usually felt when we eventually got together. I remembered the last time I was out there and how we drove around aimlessly for over thirty minutes before the nerves settled and we wound up in the town park talking and looking up at the stars. This was as far removed from that as you could get. It was good between us this time and I didn’t want it to end at all. Everything about the day was beautiful, especially you.

We stopped at your parents’ place on our way back from an ice cream place and I helped unload their car from a weekend trip. I didn’t stop to think about it. I just got up, went to the car, and carried the cooler inside. For me, that was just another telling moment. I only go to that house once every four or five years or so, and I’m only there for a few minutes each time. But it just seemed like such a natural thing to do, like I have been doing it all along. That kind of feeling is reserved for people in real relationships, I thought. Later we would confess we were having “an affair of the heart”, which went a long way towards explaining the events of that Sunday.

The following Tuesday was a lot more somber. I was a couple of days away from leaving, so we wound up doing our traditional Chinese dinner in Salisbury. The topic once again turned to our bad timing, and I told you I didn’t blame anyone or anything for that. “People don’t really know who they truly are until later in life,” I said and I meant it. All I knew when we were teenagers is that the love for you I had was deeper than anything else before it. Beyond that, I was still naive as far as how real relationships worked. Then, in our twenties, we were at two separate points in our lives. Your decision to move forward with your life prompted me to live a life of my own. Maybe the choices I made then were rash, but it did move me to experience life outside of our small town. Up until then, I had been experiencing my life in an endless loop of drama, trying hard to resolve my family’s problems while ignoring my own. Without that push, I would’ve never moved on. I would never have experienced life outside of that bubble. At least now I can see the difference between the man I was then and the man I am now. You gave me the push to mature and move forward. And I’d like to think I haven’t disappointed in that regard since this was the first trip back where I didn’t feel overwhelmed by issues of the past. The fact I was less twitchy this go around should have spoken volumes. At least that’s how I hope it came across. I still may not be the man you totally deserve, but I’d like to think I’m closer to that goal now than ever before.

Our endings have always been bittersweet. This trip was no exception. When you dropped me off at the bottom of Tremont, I had to keep fighting the urge to turn around and wave goodbye. Or walk back down the hill to you. My legs felt heavy and the aura from the headlights of the car made things seem disjointed, surreal. It was better to just keep moving forward, or else it would’ve just been even more painful five, ten minutes later. When my Aunt asked if I was ready to go home, I stumbled around with the answer. Where did I consider home? What does home mean when so many revelations happen in the space of a couple of days? I’ve loved you for years. You have felt the same way, only now you are more sure of it. What do you do with conversations like that? Do you bottle themup and keep them hid in order to keep two different worlds from colliding. Or do you admit time is short and life needs to be lived to the fullest, so be damned with the rules and let the truth fly? We chose the latter, and I’m glad we did. It was like opening a window and letting fresh air in. What was said needed to be said, or else there was no point continuing on. A twenty-five year friendship wasn’t worth throwing away just because the truth is tricky or time is inconvenient. Remaining friends after so much history has passed between us has never been easy. Why intentionally make it more difficult? The miles between make it hard enough. Let the words make it easier, I say. The rest will work itself out when it’s ready. That may be twenty years down the road. Maybe longer. Like I said on that day, I can wait.

When I got back here to Indy, I remained disjointed in place and time until now. I had mentioned, in general, to a coworker about our day, laughing about how perfect it was and that I had to come back to the same old work shit and the same old problems. “But that wasn’t reality,” she said to me and it made me feel a little sad because maybe there’s a little hint of truth in that as well. We had isolated ourselves pretty damn good from every other obligation in the world. But, for me, that day will always be a favorite of mine as long as I live because, at least for those few brief hours, we were allowed to exist on our own terms, without any expectations the past may have put on us. We were allowed to just be. We showed up for the ocean, and the sun, salt, and sand did the rest.

That’s about as perfect as a day can get…

~~~~

“Last Barn Dance”
by Cheri Knight

Later on, when the leaves are all scattered
We will look at the world with older eyes
Here we are on a road bound to no one
You and I
You and I
You and I

You pick it up and place it square upon your shoulders
I circle ’round and do my best best to make it fall
Never borrow, never bend, never bargain in the end
We’d lose it all
We’d lose it all
We’d lose it all

Yes, my darling, you can have the last dance
Just pick me up off the floor
Truly, when I can give you my hand
I’ll take yours

Pave the road along the way with good intentions
Gather up the pearls in hand and watch them shine
Listen to me, when the time comes, you can smile as they go
Cause in the end, it’s what you know
It’s what you know

Yes, my darling, you can have the last dance
Just pick me up off the floor
Truly, when I can give you my hand
I’ll take yours

Later on, when the leaves are all scattered
We will look at the world with older eyes
Here we are on a road bound together
You and I
You and I
You and I