Friday, June 24, 2016
Friday
Just getting this one in under the wire. It's 10:30pm here in dumb hot Savannah. An old family friend, Heather is visiting. Micah is asleep and I've got a few moments to keep the streak alive.
Lisa, Joe, and Jamie were at the beach this week. They rented a house with some other Ashevillians and spent their time between the Ocean and the grill. Not a bad way to spend a week if you like that sort of thing.
We spent a week near Morehead City one year, not long after we were married. Maybe it was Atlantic Beach. It was May. We rented a big house and just said "come". The turn out was pretty anemic. We had a guest at the beginning of the week, and Ana's mom came for a few days at the end. I ate trigger fish and saw my first civil war fort. I dragged Ana to see Star Wars Episode 3 on opening night at a small beach town theater in a grocery store parking lot.
We went to Savannah one year to collect my father after a long bike ride. I don't remember where the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia started, but BRAG ended in Savannah that year. It was hot. My dad looked very tired. He set up camp one night on top of a mound of fire ants and spent the night in the hospital. And still, it was better to finish the ride than come home to a house full of rowdy children. Living in Savannah now, I can't imagine what body of water they dragged us to to splash around in. I just remember that it was so hot. There were splintered, broken pylons, like the stubs of telephone poles in the shallows that were difficult to avoid for some reason. But mostly it was hot.
One year we went to Jekyll Island and I fell off of a stone wall I'd scaled and was knocked unconscious. That might not be true, but I'll never know. Mom was the keeper of those stories.
As a teenager we went to visit my Grandfather outside Holden Beach. My grandmother, who we called Mom, had died a few years before. It was a family reunion of sorts with lots of uncles and cousins on my father's side to pester as teens will do. We drove the 20 minutes or so over the bridge to the beach. My brother David wasn't planning on taking his shirt off. Later, he changed his mind, and someone reminded him to apply sunblock. David has red hair and pale skin and will cook on a cloudy day. I watched him rub lotion on his chest and reach around to his sides and back. I offered to assist, but he just shot me a look and wandered off down the beach. We spent the rest of the day running in and out of the water.
On the car ride home David began to fall apart. First he complained that he had a headache. He kept fidgeting in the seat, leaning forward, stretching back. He said he felt sick. "Do I have a sunburn on my back?" He leaned over again and I saw the raised red hourglass from his shoulder blades to top of his swim trunks. His sunburn made an angry "X" across his back where his hands couldn't reach. It would make him uncomfortable for days. I was so happy.
Lisa, Joe, and Jamie were at the beach this week. They rented a house with some other Ashevillians and spent their time between the Ocean and the grill. Not a bad way to spend a week if you like that sort of thing.
We spent a week near Morehead City one year, not long after we were married. Maybe it was Atlantic Beach. It was May. We rented a big house and just said "come". The turn out was pretty anemic. We had a guest at the beginning of the week, and Ana's mom came for a few days at the end. I ate trigger fish and saw my first civil war fort. I dragged Ana to see Star Wars Episode 3 on opening night at a small beach town theater in a grocery store parking lot.
We went to Savannah one year to collect my father after a long bike ride. I don't remember where the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia started, but BRAG ended in Savannah that year. It was hot. My dad looked very tired. He set up camp one night on top of a mound of fire ants and spent the night in the hospital. And still, it was better to finish the ride than come home to a house full of rowdy children. Living in Savannah now, I can't imagine what body of water they dragged us to to splash around in. I just remember that it was so hot. There were splintered, broken pylons, like the stubs of telephone poles in the shallows that were difficult to avoid for some reason. But mostly it was hot.
One year we went to Jekyll Island and I fell off of a stone wall I'd scaled and was knocked unconscious. That might not be true, but I'll never know. Mom was the keeper of those stories.
As a teenager we went to visit my Grandfather outside Holden Beach. My grandmother, who we called Mom, had died a few years before. It was a family reunion of sorts with lots of uncles and cousins on my father's side to pester as teens will do. We drove the 20 minutes or so over the bridge to the beach. My brother David wasn't planning on taking his shirt off. Later, he changed his mind, and someone reminded him to apply sunblock. David has red hair and pale skin and will cook on a cloudy day. I watched him rub lotion on his chest and reach around to his sides and back. I offered to assist, but he just shot me a look and wandered off down the beach. We spent the rest of the day running in and out of the water.
On the car ride home David began to fall apart. First he complained that he had a headache. He kept fidgeting in the seat, leaning forward, stretching back. He said he felt sick. "Do I have a sunburn on my back?" He leaned over again and I saw the raised red hourglass from his shoulder blades to top of his swim trunks. His sunburn made an angry "X" across his back where his hands couldn't reach. It would make him uncomfortable for days. I was so happy.
# posted by joel @ 8:13 PM 
