Written: in my at-home office
Powered by: coffee, duh
Inspired by: daydreaming
We were supposed to be at the beach. This time of year everyone’s at the beach, and we like the hot excitement of being surrounded by people. The twins always make new friends, and it’s good people watching for Rita and I – she says it fuels that novel she’s always talking about writing.
This year though, we all stay home. We watch the news (both morning and night) and we all pick out what kind of masks we want to wear when we go outside. Rita stocks up on the traditional medical-style ones, while the kids and I scour the internet for fun patterns, finally settling on Minecraft for one and tie-dye for the other. Mine is black, with the Rolling Stone’s tongue in red, right where my mouth should be.
It was a rough day, when we cancelled the reservation we’d had since last year at a little bungalow that allowed odd pets (for the twins refused to leave the rabbit in the care of anyone else). We had long ago run out of novelty in our lives. All the board games had been played, the backyard was a wasteland of abandoned attempts to satisfy our outdoor needs: a deflated baby pool in the corner, a half-dug fire pit, various balls and rackets scattered across the grass. The poles for a soccer goal were still boxed up in the garage waiting for me to assemble them. Same with the pieces of plywood and mesh we thought might one day construct an outdoor bunny paradise. But after the first few weeks became the first few months, it was hard to do much more than decide where to order dinner from, what movie to watch next.
That night though, after it was all final, we decided to go out on a walk. The twins filled water bottles with crushed ice and Gatorade and Rita and I filled water bottles with…something else, and we donned our masks and dumped the bunny into a little wheelbarrow and set off. We walked in the street because it gave everyone more space and there were never any cars anymore.
The world is calm and the sun is low. Rita points out the moon already attempting its takeover, and the twins take turns lifting the rabbit overhead and pretending he is Simba, they love doing this and have watched the new Lion King four times this month. The press their thumbs seriously into the little space between his eyes, smear an invisible glob of meaning across his forehead.
It is not our vacation time at the beach, but it is not nothing. It is a way of being, here, now, as is, and we are happy enough with that. We are happy enough making as many of our minutes into good ones, knowing that when we return home tonight someone might be bored and someone might get upset but for now we are just walking together. And the world is calm and the sun is low, and the moon is attempting its takeover.