The Old Man seemed to be in quite a serious mood. I wasn't sure if he was just being grumpy, or if he was going to get strange on me and start talking about his life coming to an end, or his greatest regrets, or some other old person talk.
We walked out the door and took the sharp right toward the boardwalk and the beach. People whizzed past us as we got close to the boardwalk—skimming by on rollerblades, on bicycles, and everything in between. One guy rolled past on a unicycle.
“Does that look fun to you? Why doesn't he just ride a bike?”
The Old Man didn't answer, he just kept waiting for a break in the action so we could cross to the sandy side of the boardwalk.
Once we past the boardwalk, we hit the soft, warm sand. It wasn't hot outside, but it was warm enough to make the sand nice to walk on. I took my sandals off and enjoyed the feeling between my toes. The Old Man didn't take his sandals off because they were the kind that strapped on to your feet with velcro.
“Where we going?”
“Just thought it would be nice to take an afternoon walk—get outside for a bit.”
He looked at me and I was glad to see his expression was a bit lighter than it had been before. However, when he glanced over, the Old Man failed to see a rock in front of him, tripped, and fell to the sand.
It was strange. He went from a grumpy old man—one that I tolerated—respected--and somehow admired—to a fragile, brittle little creature, in the matter of 10 seconds. The image of God that hovered over my table moments before was transformed into something akin to Jesus' last moments on the Cross. All the divinity and royalty had been sucked from him in an instant. Now he just looked weak. He lay face down in the sand after falling awkwardly over himself. His aura evaporated. He was a skeleton—caught between living-death and death. There was sand all over his face and on his cotton shorts. He appeared helpless.
“You okay?”
He didn't answer.
I looked on, the awkwardness congealing on my arms and legs—settling there as it projected itself outward from the circumstances onto by body.
“You okay?”
“I'm fine, you little bastard. Help me up.”
“Okay.”
I grabbed one arm and held onto him as he picked himself up from the warm sand, coughing all the way. Once erect, he wiped the sand from all over his clothes. After a moment we continued walking toward the water.
It took him a while to catch his breath. I watched the waves break on the shore as they do each moment of each day. The afternoon winds made a mess of the surface—it was uninviting, choppy water with no illusion of order or any care for it. There were some tourist kids trying their best to ride a couple of cheap foam boards in the whitewash. With each wave came a new obstacle and a fun moment. I could see a fisherman out on the jetty that was to our left. He just stood there with his pole in the water.
After a while the Old Man was ready to talk. We sat on the shore talking about the sea. He told me about fishing and about his "lost generation".
"So, why did you keep going out there every day? How did you face something--the sea--so vast, so incomprehensible and so threatening? How did you grow to love it so dearly? How did you balance fear with enjoyment, anxiety with the presence to smile?"
He took a long time to answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment