Time and Tides
The march, retreat, and repeat of memory
Andrew and I have rented a cottage that overlooks the beach; it is winter in Massachusetts. We are joined by a friend who has just experienced a devastating breakup and he arrives as a shade of himself. We don’t so much live there as haunt the premises together. We move about the house without touching or speaking to one another until late afternoon. We take foggy walks alone by the beach, at the pace of Southern Gothic brides abandoned at the altar. We are still more than six months from a vaccine, and time has no meaning. Andrew and I spend fifteen hours each week working at a candy shop, boxing chocolates and tying Christmas ribbons. It’s a dystopian Hallmark movie – Christmas Candy at the Cape! – in which we can’t even invite our neighbors indoors. We keep the radio on all day to remind us that in other places there are other people. KEXP Seattle, Radio Milwaukee, WFUV, electronic music from Berlin. In other places, it is morning, or maybe it is night time.
Now, it’s 2023. My baby is not quite 4 months old. We’re at Cape Cod for the week, our first vacation together. The same contingent of adults, in the same cottage we inhabited as ghosts in 2020. Baby Aadi saw the beach for the first time today (we felt delighted; he, nonplussed). Yesterday, driving here, was his first time outside of Brooklyn. Our friend observed from behind the wheel that this also meant it was his first time on the mainland United States.
Venus turns direct. What lessons have I learned about what —and who— I want? The free astrology app I’ve downloaded demands that I reflect on my needs as it informs me of this transit. I’ve been saying ‘I want a relationship, after the baby comes.’ I want romance. I don’t know what that means. Planetary movements are not themselves meaningful to me, just a reminder of the passage of time. Venus darts forward and back, and I’m still stationary; at least in that respect. Some things are moving ahead full speed, and some things remain in retrograde.
I try to make an account of the day, its laughter and the food we ate. Mostly I think about the beautiful sunset in blues, softest pinks, even gentler purples. The sun itself a fading bruise, orange against purple. I was standing alone by the water, marveling at the speed at which the sun slips away once it meets the tree line. I sit now next to my sleeping baby. I love to look at him while he sleeps. His bow mouth; his slack, soft arms teed out around him; the fan of his long eyelashes curling up from his round face. He’s so soft and sweet. His personality is already soft, too; more cautious and gentle than my nieces. Each day is a sprawling cosmic transit for him, where he learns more and more about what he wants.
I walked along the beach this afternoon, our own little beach by the cottage. I was wearing my big headphones and thinking about real-life stuff that sounds like it should be something out of a David Foster Wallace book: horseshoe crab blood is more precious than gold, with bioengineering applications so sophisticated that there is a cottage industry in Cape Cod around their capture, bloodletting, release, and regeneration. They simply need to be tagged so they aren’t exsanguinated too frequently. It takes them one week to regenerate; at the same time, they apparently achieved perfect morphology over 400 million years ago and haven’t bothered to evolve at all since then. Wild!
Anyway. I also list my gratitudes for another day spent with friends - more specifically, whispering them into a shell, and tossing it back to the ocean. This is something you must do each time you visit the beach. A whimsical girl I hopelessly admired in high school once told me this. I was in high school before “manic pixie dream girl” even had a name, and I was not immune to the seduction of this trope. I was struck by this ritual of etiquette towards the ocean. On every beach day since then, I’ve whispered my thanks for the day into the curve of a random shell’s ear and returned it to the waves, without exception.
‘The baby rolled over today,’ I tell the shell, and then immediately look around, feeling like an idiot. In truth I am grateful, though, for how his milestones mark time like a metronome; the relentless BPM of a bass line, broadcasting live from Berlin.
Yesterday, we spent the day on the boat belonging to our friends in town. We were moored near a wide expanse of deserted beach on an island created by the cut. The water was cold on the ocean side, when we disembarked and trekked to the far side of the island. We cracked open Bud Lights and White Claws, sprawled in canvas chairs our friends have stashed among the tall beach grass. The chairs will stay there all season.
Warmish water, though, on the bay side where the boat is anchored. Light filters in from the boat windows. Crisp lettuce in the ham and cheese sandwiches we eat on the foredeck. On the dinghy ride back to the pier, I sit next to my old friend, the one who had the breakup before; feeling the ease of our presence together, the familiar warmth of his arm. I look at the golden hour light limning my son, cradled in Andrew’s arms across from me. Their matching brown hair, the light making haloes, sainting them. Andrew leans to kiss Aadi’s head with its soft, thinning baby hair. I think to myself, ‘when I’m old, when he’s grown, I’ll remember this.’ For a moment I feel the time has already passed. Even as it’s happening, I already think: This is a good memory.
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This is the best one so far. I haven't enjoyed a piece of writing like this in quite a while.
I love this so, so much.