I COULD WRITE about the ocean and spazzles of sun on salty ripples on the hottest day of July, or a head-on dive into the embrace of a cool wave, or the sensation of people all around and their voices all together with radios and gulls and swishing sand. But what I really want to write about is my father, and leading up to the dive into the water. Because without my father, I would not be at the beach on this weekend that I take every summer with my three daughters.
When I call my father ahead to say we’re coming to his house, he writes it on the calendar even though I’m never sure of the exact date until the day before. Plans with teens, after all, can be impromptu at best. My three teens don’t want to do or plan anything, just hang out at the beach all day, and the same goes for me. We imagine that Grandpa Bob will never want to join us in the hot sun and crowds, at a state beach 40 minutes away. But when I confirm with him—the night before—of our arrival time and plans, he says, “You’re going to the beach? Hm. I’ll go with you.” And I feel a mixture of sweet comfort and slight burden.
I know he’ll go shopping before we arrive: cold cuts—turkey, roast beef, Swiss cheese. Iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, rye bread. Dinner—some frozen meat thing, one baked potato each, frozen vegetable. For the kids (and himself) he gets 2 boxes of frozen blueberry waffles for breakfast. Makes sure the large plastic bottle of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup isn’t getting low. Frozen blueberry bagels, English muffins, cream cheese, orange juice, and his regular grapefruit juice.
When we crankily pull into the driveway of his house, a pale blue Cape with black shutters, I immediately get the time-travel feeling, not particularly positive, and not negative either. Limbo? I left this house when I was 14 years old, and thus I am eternally 14 when within its perimeter—so, basically, another teenager.
At once I spy, leaned up against his car in the driveway, Dad’s beach umbrella, a stained camping chair, a mini duffle bag, and an old mini red-and-white cooler, just big enough for him. Sleepy teens emerge from our car. Dad comes out the front door and calls each person by name as he greets us with his version of a bear hug, maybe more like an owl hug, his head held back and turned slightly, with a smile.
“Aleeeeeee….”
“Angelaaaa….”
“Viiiiii-olet…”
“Lilaaaaa…..”
(He will do the very same hug for the farewells, smiling the same way, and it will sometimes feel to me, for just a millisecond, like he might not let go. But that is not so. It’s me.)
“We can take our car to the beach,” I suggest, hoping he’ll let me drive.
“I’ll drive,” he insists quietly. “I have the in-state sticker for parking.”
With little further ado, we head off in his 6-speed car, and he points to the gas station with the cheapest gas, tells me to fill up there when I head out. He’s put on his oversized sunglasses, and while he checks the radio and the AC levels, I come to notice that one of the lenses of his glasses has fallen out. How did I not notice that before? I feel that sunken embarrassment when I realize he doesn’t even notice the missing lens. I cannot, will not tell him! But after looking out my passenger window and mentally squirming for a few minutes, realizing there’s no way out, I finally say it. Quickly. Quietly: “Dad, you have a lens missing!” I feel even worse now.
“Huh?” he says softly. “Gee, what happened here? Must’ve popped out. Hm. Luckily I have an extra pair with me.”
Phew. I appreciate the forethought of absent-minded, dusty, musically inclined engineers who remember all things numerical and collect clocks and occasionally cats. He has me reach into his mini duffle, at my feet, and get out another pair of sunglasses that look just like the ones he has on.
We drive for 40 minutes and then wait in an endless long line of scorching cars all going to the one parking lot we are going to. It takes about 20 minutes to traverse one mile. Dad hums to himself. He says not a word, except a few comments about how they more than doubled the fees this summer, from $7 for seniors to $14, and to $28 for out-of-staters. He retrieves a $20 bill from his wallet and puts it in a crack in the dashboard long before we reach the parking lot booth.
Rare sidelong glances at my father give me a funny familiar feeling. It’s the same thing that people wonder about their cats: What does he think about as he sits there?
Eventually, finally on the beach, we spread the blankets and towels to earn our various supine, prone, and sitting positions in the sun. Next to me is the compact space occupied by my father and his things: camping chair, sunshade umbrella, a newspaper, and 2 towels. In his cooler: a thermos of ice water, 2 O’Doul’s non-alcoholic beers, 3 oranges (for the kids), 1 apple. Dad sits and stares at the water most of the time. Reads the newspaper. He gets up twice to walk the long walk to the bathhouse restroom and back. He says one or two sentences in the hours that pass as imperceptibly as the revolving of the earth.
The teenagers do their own thing; I ignore them as I am used to doing now.
Rare sidelong glances at my father give me a funny familiar feeling. It’s the same thing that people wonder about their cats: What does he think about as he sits there?
At the end of the salty day, we head back home, and maybe a bit sun-struck, I daringly suggest going out to eat. Unheard of for my father. He pauses, then replies.
“Hm. Well… maybe we can go to the fish place on the way home. It’s at the fork off Route 1.”
I feel a grand accomplishment has just been made. I hold my breath.
“Hm, it should be on the right, coming up here,” he says to himself.
There it is. A little fish shack, off the side of the road. A nice shack, for locals. I’ve never been there although I grew up in this town.
Dad orders for himself. “I’ll have fish and chips. Flounder. And a Bud.” His impish grin—he usually drinks the O’Doul’s.
On impulse I order $78 worth of overpriced, heavenly fried fish for the famished kids and me, and as I go to pay, Dad hands me some cash: a $10 bill and a $5 bill.
“Here’s for my dinner, $15. Wait! Whoa, the beer costs $4! Arg!” He gets that look of shock when something doesn’t cost what it did in 1960. “Give me back the $15 — here’s a $20.”
I take his money reluctantly, greedily. I daresay my sisters will be jealous when they hear that I got him to eat out.
When we are all back at Dad’s house, wiped out and in our beds, I stare at the ceiling of the room I occupied for my first 14 years. I hear the bellyaching of crickets, a train’s distant whistle, then Dad’s slow footsteps coming up the staircase. From the top stair, he calls down at the cat to join him.
“Kitteeeeee…”
Ali de Groot is director of publishing for Modern Memoirs.