Hi there!
Today’s drive is short and sweet, but it takes you someplace nice and warm.
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Enjoy!
I walk outside through the screened-in porch and traverse the sun-bleached road, then stand on the top step to look out over the river. The palm trees lining the bank surrender to the wind in a cool hush.
There’s a No Trespassing sign slung knee-height over the entrance, though most of me knows it’s to keep out strangers, not family. My brother Kenny sits at the end of the dock. He wears a white shirt, back hunched over, looking down at his feet dangling over the water.
The past, a thing I cannot change, is what stands between us. I am, in part, relieved that this is where he goes to consider the disappointments of life.
For now, I let him keep that for himself.
***
Our aunts and uncles tell us to stay away.
“It ain’t safe. Y’all gotta be careful down there,” says my mom’s brother-in-law, Glenn.
He’s standing by the kitchen door in a cowboy hat, eating a white donut, and the powder spills into his goatee as he speaks.
It’s true: the dock is rotting. Hornets have taken up residence beneath the steps. It’s endured dozens of hurricanes and decades of berating from salt and wind and bird shit.
It could break at any moment, but we go anyway.
***
That night, the three of us — Kenny, my sister Alyssa, and me — play cards on the porch until the briny breeze tempers and my mother arrives at the door to kiss us goodnight, bleary eyed and smiling.
When we hear her go upstairs to bed, Kenny sits still, moves only his eyes toward Alyssa, then me.
“You ready?”
We wrap ourselves in blankets and grab beers from the fridge and walk barefoot across the road, which glows purple in the night.
Down at the dock, I notice all the lights around us: the glowing windows of my mother’s childhood home, the power plant blinking across the river, and the glitter of stars above.
We sit cross legged on the wood, sipping Guinness and passing a joint that makes us giggle. Their laughs are my favorite sound.
We line up in a row facing the dock’s end — my brother first, me in the middle, and my sister last, our birth order in reverse.
We move our arms as if rowing an imaginary canoe, and I, posing as a naturalist guide, tell a story.
“The Indian River is an estuary, where salt water meets fresh...inviting a rich collection of wildlife to the area. Pelicans, gulls, fish, eels, dolphins, manatees...What can you hear?”
I close my eyes and listen to the waves, which rise and fall like a million breaths, and I remember how good it feels to pretend, to be children again: three planets in a galaxy only we can see.
Wow! I closed my eyes and it was like I was there at the top of the dock watching the three of you. Or at the porch seeing your mom kiss you good night...and yes...I could even see your Uncle Glenn in his cowboy hat. I truly love how you write. You took me back to a place I remember with fondness. Only wishing I had been around when you were there.
Looking forward to next Sunday. Love you!