Life's a Beach

Sunday, June 1 (I think)

I was cleaning and polishing the inside of the boat, stowing the items we'd stored in the spare stateroom, and making up bunks in anticipation of the arrival of my mom, Grace, and her boyfriend, Dexter.

“Why are you doing all of this?” Wayne asked, “When everybody gets here, no one will notice.”

“It needs to be done and it makes me feel better.”

Wayne thinks I’m crazy, because I always clean like a fiend when guests are expected. I did when I had a house, and I do it now. Perhaps, I don’t want anyone to know what a slob I can be. But, it goes further than that. I want everything to look as perfect as it can. If I have a party or the family comes for a holiday, it bothers me when the guests arrive and mess up my “Better Homes & Gardens” presentation by placing their bags on the floor or in a chair, and their food containers on the kitchen counters. I would rather prepare all of the food myself than have guests arrive with big bags of chips and plastic containers full of store-bought coleslaw. They pull out a chair; I push it in. They put their camera on the table; I hide it on top of the refrigerator. They bring in a box of cookies; I find a plate and arrange them in a pin-wheel of overlapping circles. I know I’m obsessive, and after my second glass of wine, I couldn’t care less. Still every time, company is coming, I go through the same routine.

So, I started early in the morning. By 1:00 p.m., Wayne was tired of trying to look busy while I worked. He suggested that we walk over to the Banana Boat Grill for a coke. We sat in the cool shade of a deck, sipping our ice cold soft drinks, and got involved in conversation with some locals.

We met Algie—tall and so black, he was almost blue. He was trim, neat, and well-spoken. Algie gave up his job in Barbados as an air traffic control manager, where he was responsible for ninety-seven controllers. He returned to his homeland to captain the only local-owned fishing charter boat in Provo. It was called “Gwod Phrienz,” purported to be the West Indies spelling of “Good Friends”. His boat was docked two slips away from the Ella McQuaid.

Beverages progressed to beer, and time passed quickly, until it was clear that no more cleaning was to take place on that fine Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning, I put my hangover on hold and was a whirlwind of activity, trying to finish my cleaning before the arrival of my family. I thought by the time they landed, retrieved their luggage, went through customs, and found a cab, I would have time to complete the transformation of our lived-in floating abode to a luxury suite on the Queen Mary, then I would take a shower, put on clean clothes and makeup and be standing their looking lean and tan, and well-kempt. I would be the perfect hostess and they would go home and tell everyone how great I looked and what a great life I had.

When they arrived, I was on my hands and knees polishing the floor. A bandana was wrapped around my greasy hair and sweat was dripping into my eyes. My clothes were dirty and stained and hung from my limbs like wet rags. They didn’t care. They were so excited to be there. They came bearing gifts and provisions and caught us up on their lives.

Dexter, my daughter’s handsome twenty-three year-old boyfriend, having had the mission to locate a repair manual for our outboard, ordered one for us. After two phone calls, where the provider seemed to be asking questions that were too specific, a huge box arrived at his door. Inside, Dexter found a new outboard, not a manual. We laughed as he told his story in his no-nonsense tone of voice.

Mom, two years a widow, had a new boyfriend named Bill. Dexter just graduated from college and had selected a job. Grace quit her job on Wall Street and was going to start teaching in the Fall. Grace and Dexter were to begin apartment hunting, as soon as they returned to the states.

Their knapsacks and duffles were piled in my clean boat, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to share a little bit of paradise with them.

After dinner, Grace said, “Who want to play Trivial Pursuit?”

“I will,” Dexter said. His mission in life seems to be to please my daughter, in spite of her moods and whims. This endears me to him.

“I’ll play,” I said.

“Me, too,” Mom said.

Wayne agreed reluctantly.

And so we played, but I wondered how I was going to entertain them for a whole week.
That night, before falling asleep on the sofa, I planned some diversions, but options were limited because if you don’t dive and fish, activities in Provo are pretty much limited to beach, snorkel, eat, and drink. Mom and Grace are both likely to get sea-sick in the boat when it’s docked, so I didn’t plan any big boat adventures.

The next day, Tuesday, I suggested a dinghy ride around to Smith Point for a day of swimming and snorkeling. Here, there are patch reefs right off the beach. The five of us crowded into the eleven-foot inflatable. Snorkel equipment, a beach umbrella (for my alabaster mother), bottled water, towels, and cameras were piled at our feet. The sun was shining brightly as the motor strained to push the boat around the harbor and through the canal. We plowed into the bay like a big manatee and came face to face with a steady surge of waves. Although, they weren’t large, the combination of wind, waves, and the weight in the boat sent water up and over the pontoons and into our faces. We moved toward a line of black storm clouds that hung in the blue sky like a partially drawn shade.

“That looks ominous,” my mother said. She was looking towards the clouds and grasping the dinghy with both hands.

Finding a good landing spot on the rocky beach was impossible. We hobbled across slimy, plant-covered rocks in our bare feet trying to avoid the pointy ones.

“Oooch! Ouch!"
“Yuk.”



Once we made it past the ouchy, yucky stuff, Grace, Wayne, and Dexter put on masks, snorkels, and fins and took immediately to the water. By this time, the whole sky was a mottled black and gray. My mom stood on the beach nervously tracking the storm.

“Don’t worry. It’ll pass over. I see blue sky over there.” I pointed to a tiny patch of blue then worked the beach umbrella into the sand.

But the storm didn't pass us by and before long, I looked up from where I was wading in the water and saw Mom standing all by herself on the beach stooped under the green umbrella. She was wrapped in a towel. Her hair was wet—big clumps of it sticking to her forehead. I joined her under the umbrella that apparently was meant to protect from the sun, not the rain. It leaked like a cheap tent. We could see flashes of lightning miles away. Thunder echoed across the clouds and water.

Wayne came to shore, and we left Grace and Dexter to their fun and took Mom back to the boat for a cup of tea, a warm shower, and her book. Then, we rejoined the kids. By this time, the storm had passed and we snorkeled.

Big red starfish lay on the sandy bottom. Dexter drifted up on a Hawksbill turtle and followed it along a grassy underwater meadow. Small, colorful fish swam near rocks and corals. I wished that Mom were there to see it all. It wasn’t a huge reef, but snorkeling from the beach is an easy way to get acclimated to the equipment, and enticing enough to make you want to see more. Maybe, the next day.

Wednesday, we tried again, but this time went further east to a sandy, crescent beach with water so crystal clear, we could have been in a bathtub. Like the day before, we were completely alone on the beach. The bottom was covered with soft sand. It stretched forty feet to a distinct dark line. There, grass and rocks prevailed for the convenience of snorkelers.

I encouraged my mom to try on the mask and explained how to breathe through the snorkel. We were standing in perfectly-calm, waist-deep water.

I pulled tendrils of hair from her mask. “Do you have a good seal?”

She repositioned the mask.

“Now, put this in your mouth and breathe slowly. Breathe through your mouth."

I could see fear in her eyes.

“You don’t have to swim,” I said. “You can just bend forward and put your face in the water."

She put her face in the water. Not ten seconds later, she popped up and spit the snorkel from her mouth. “I can’t do it. ‘

“It’s OK, Mom, maybe later.”

I always thought I was the biggest chicken in the family. When I was in my twenties and we went bike-riding together down a mountain road, I crawled along with my foot on the brake. Mom tore down the hill, but before she got to the bottom, she crashed. Maybe she's more scared now. But snorkeling isn't dangerous. I was disappointed. I wanted her to see this whole new world. I wanted her to see the things I loved so much.



The five of us spent most of the day lying in twelve inches of warm water. Gentle waves lapped over our backs or fronts. We developed the Caribbean Water exercise routine, doing push-ups, the alligator walk, and isometric stomach crunches. Then Grace and I progressed to bent legged and flat-footed handstands, followed by a water ballet, more reminiscent of beached whales then Esther Williams.

Late in the afternoon, we noticed a large distinct shadow moving across the pale blue water.

“What’s that?” someone asked.

I looked up at the sky thinking it was the shadow of a cloud, but the sky was blue and clear. The dark spot undulated like a bubble just before it lifts from the end of a wand, and it was moving toward us. We stood and stared. Grace and Mom ran towards shore.

It came closer.

“It’s fish!” I shouted in amazement, “millions of tiny fish”. They swarmed around us, staying just clear of our body parts, as if a force field emanated from our skin that both attracted and repelled them. We ran and got out snorkel equipment and slid into the shallow water on our bellies.

Grace and mom were standing a few feet from the black bubble. They moved cautiously toward it.

“They’re not touching you?” Grace asked.

The churning fish moved in a clockwise pattern, then with a barely discernable movement of one of our hands or feet or for no apparent reason, the fish would suddenly reverse direction in unison. There was no thinning at the edges of the whirring mass, just rows and columns of shiny two-inch long fish crowded together in a black bubble with ever-changing boundaries.

Mom, standing right in the middle of them now, said, “I wish Bill could see this.”

We lay still in the water floating around my mom, our snorkels in the air. Then we noticed ghost-like silver disks hovering just outside the mass. They were small bar jacks, the predators. And looking up towards the surface of the water, we could see the long, thin, nearly translucent bodies of needlefish. These larger fish had herded the shiners into this bait ball. I wondered if the shiners stayed with us so long, because they knew their predators would not come near us.

I tried to get my mother to try the snorkel and mask again, but she preferred watching from above. The rest of us floated there for nearly an hour. The fish never thinned or made an effort to leave. They just kept whirling and whirling, a silver dervish. We were mesmerized. Would they do this forever?

One by one, we returned to the beach and started packing to go home and the black shadow merged with the dark green band of water just off the beach as we pushed the dinghy from shore.

That night, we climbed the stone steps referred to locally as Cardiac Hill to sit in the Sunset Café.

“Bill would like this,” my mom said as we watched the boats bobbing in the marina below us. The glowing orange sun melted into aqua, then disappeared. Mom was missing Bill and after we went home, I showed her how to use my email program, then shot her love note across the ocean to Keyser, West Virginia.