Driving home from the store with a few things. I get to a Stop sign. Riding toward me are two boys on their bikes, probably 10 or so. They’re enjoying their summer day, another day away from school, they take their baseball caps off and wave them at each other, pretending to be someone or something. I smile as I am instantly transported back 60 years or so. I remember that joy, that freedom, that friendship between two inseparable friends, like it doesn’t get any better than this.
But it does get better as it also gets more complicated. I have no way to tell them, to warn them. “Remember this day,” I could say, and everyone would think I was some old creep, weirdo. Next to my seat, I’ve got a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s, a 6-pack of IPA and some fresh shrimp for tonight’s dinner. To those boys, that’s probably a gold mine. At that age, we were eating Sealtest or Breyer’s. These kids would probably be happier with an entire box of ice cream sandwiches (why didn’t I think of that?) And I’m sure the beer would be a great temptation. The shrimp – too much trouble as I’m sure at such a young age, they’d have no enjoyment in deveining and making a quick shrimp boil with butter, lemon and some Old Bay seasoning. A touch of saffron would improve things a lot but that’s not their world, yet.
The boys are in my rearview mirror now as they zig and zag down the country road near my neighborhood. I continue to the next Stop sign and turn left and after a few more turns I am home.
I put away the few items in the fridge and dig into a bowl of ice cream. I am brought back to those days of freedom, riding all over endlessly on my bike visiting one friend, then the two of us gathering several other buddies and just taking off, perhaps to the sand dunes and the bay to hang out, go for a swim or just charge down a hill at all get-out. No regrets, the memories are warm and bring me back to a different place. I am glad I don’t have to navigate the school years, worry about pleasing or displeasing my parents or how or where I’m going to fit in with girls, school programs, sports or college. Then career choices. Whew, I got through all that.
The other night I was restless and it took me three hours to fall asleep. It happens once in a while. Invariably my past floods into view and my brain cannot expunge the cascading thoughts and memories. The past gets lit up by a spotlight and all I want to do is sleep. But no, something starts reviewing the good and the bad in my past. I turn over but the movie has already begun. Whatever happened to me and Judy? Judy? That was more than 50 years ago – where did that come from? Lever Brothers, the soap conglomerate, interviewed me several times back in – wait, was it 1978 or 1979? I cannot remember the year but I can remember how I never heard from them again. They brought me back for several interviews and everything was a shoo-in. And then it wasn’t. It ended as quickly as it began. What the hell happened? It shouldn’t matter, I just want to get to sleep! After all, I had a great career and I’m happily retired. But why did Mr. Marketing Director go from loving me to never calling me again?
I tell myself it’s for the best since a few years later, I began a different job that defined me, set me up for success for the rest of my career, where I even met my future wife. She is asleep next to me, oblivious to my midnight turmoil. I wish I could just close my eyes the way she does and instantly fall into a slumber followed by a deep sleep.
More thoughts occur, more missed opportunities but also career highlights appear. This picture is a rerun and I can’t make it stop. I love the night as long as I stay up all night. God, I hate going to sleep.
The next day, I awake to the memory of motor boats cruising across the Great South Bay of Long Island, water skiing in great loops across the wakes and the waves. Last night’s sleep problems have been purged, for now at least.
We need something decorative for the back yard and the patio, something funky and unique. We head out for a few shops that tend to have unusual pieces or “just the right thing.” We agree to avoid the chain stores since we want something a bit different. Along the way we find a few antique shops that also might have that item, whatever it is. No gnomes allowed.
Along the way we see a sign for a concert featuring a local blues rock band we’ve seen before. The sign indicates the concert will take place later that night so we call our friends Ann and Jim to have them meet us there. We arrange to bring sandwiches and chips to the show and we all meet in the parking lot and walk over to pick out a good spot with an unobstructed view of the stage. I notice that Ann seems troubled about something and she isn’t her usual self. I worry that I might be too intrusive or curious but I probably should say something. But it is probably just a quick dust-up between Ann and Jim that has her a bit pinched, so I don’t intrude. Instead I try to make her laugh by sharing a ridiculous article I had read earlier in the day. She doesn’t laugh but she does smile then looks off into the distance. Then she says, “Thanks, I needed that,” but nothing more. Jim is walking straight ahead, acknowledging nothing.
I have cracked a door open but I do not dare to venture any further inside. Couples have their own language, their own coping mechanisms and they will navigate this as all married couples do. With time, perhaps a martini, some silence and then a talk or a reconciliation, somewhere down the road – but not tonight.
The concert’s great and I can see later that Ann is alive again, moving to the music, a small smile on her face. I look across to my wife and she is grooving, feet tapping to each note. Jim is less stoic than before but is also trying to have fun as he yells out “Freebird!” during a break and the crowd laughs in response.
Afterward we go out for a drink and everything seems to be in the process of putting things back together. Maybe it’s good that we called earlier, intervened in their crisis and perhaps helped defuse an argument. It doesn’t seem as if it was anything bigger than that. Every marriage comes fraught with these sudden spikes but there isn’t always the best Emergency Kit available to fix things. Instead we stumble and fall into misunderstandings and assumptions about each other’s character. And then we rationalize it or pursue it further but we find a way to survive. There are always some skeletons of previous squabbles that make us uneasy but too often it is just easier to ignore it and store it all away. Not a recipe for success maybe but it is often just what we do, what seems easier. Until it’s not. Then the fuse gets lit, the bomb explodes and the truth bursts out and both sides acknowledge the hurts, the slights and pains and things begin to get put back together again. It’s not always pretty but it gets the truth out so we can all look at it and figure out a way back – or forward.
And after it is over we tell ourselves, “Well, it’s good we talked it over, we shouldn’t hold these things in, blah blah blah.” We acknowledge each other and then we feel superior that we “worked through it” and move ahead in our treacherous journey to Survival.
A week later we are on our way to a Jackson Browne concert at one of our favorite venues, a large outdoor, covered theater which provides great views of the stage from everywhere. The band is spot-on and Jackson is providing great introductions to each song so we gain some perspective or insight into what inspiration went into the song so many years ago.
He introduces These Days as “probably my oldest song you’re going to hear tonight.”
Well I’ve been out walking
I don’t do too much talking these days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
For you
And all the times I had the chance to
He sings a few more stanzas then ends with the lines:
Please don’t confront me with my failure
I have not forgotten it.
He wrote this song when he was only 16, are you kidding me? What does a 16 year-old really know about loss and regret with such beautiful words and melody?
Loss, regret, moving on. It’s funny how we move on now. We bury regret with new adventures and change. And loss, well, we figure we’ll always make up for it, as if it’s a never-ending pool of sorrow that can be replenished by something or someone else.
The drive home from the city is a long one. We talk of the concert, how great the band was, the song selection, delights and surprises during the show. Suddenly we see up ahead a strange shape on the highway and it is two cars that are twisted at odd angles and facing each other across the three lanes. The accident appears to have happened in the last minute or so but everything seems okay. The participants are all on their cell phones, seem a bit stunned they are in this predicament but appear to be okay. We carefully twist and turn to avoid the broken car parts. As we inch past we begin to see flashing lights approaching. After a bit, traffic is back to normal, we speed home and enjoy some wine; it’s late but a nightcap seems in order.
A few days later I pass a church I’ve seen all these years we’ve lived here. Something makes me stop and go in. I’m not a church person. I believe in God, it’s just that I have my own faith and listening to someone exhort me or explain things to me does not work for me as religion. I sit in one of the pews and it is quiet, light filtering in through the stained glass surrounding me. I take some time to give thanks for a life well-lived, healthy children now grown up and I pray not for me but for the world. The one that seems to be falling apart all around us. A few thoughts about my life and how I am grateful, perhaps even blessed. The ending to the song wafts back into my head: “Please don’t confront me with my failure, I have not forgotten it.” I shake my head, realize we all have failures but we mostly survive them, grow from them.
I’ll have to go home and record that song for my daughter and son, both now in their 30s. When I do give it to them, I’ll just say, “Listen to this song whenever you need. It won’t save you just like no song can really save you. Sometimes you just listen because the song is good or because you’ll remember your dad suggested it.”
I get back in my car in the church parking lot and the news announces another Fast Radio Burst has been intercepted coming from a distant part of the universe. The bursts are unknown in origin but could be the dying heartbeat of a neutron star – or a message from an ancient alien civilization. Also in the news, the heat wave is now buckling streets in London and another lake out west has dried up. A human fossil has been discovered that suggests mankind is one million years older than previously thought. What the hell? Everything we learned in elementary and high school about Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, Home Erectus, Australopithecus and Homo Whatever is now up for grabs, thrown out the window or what? We all got quizzed on the stages of man and now it’s still just an evolving story?
I tune the radio to find some music but nothing sustains me as the Scan feature just keeps finding songs that aren’t in my wheelhouse. I would insert a CD but most car manufacturers dispensed with CD players years ago. My dealer told me they rationalized that everyone preferred streaming their own songs, so no option for a CD player. Thanks. Sure I could listen to some streaming options but I don’t know what I want.
The next day we drive to the beach, the Atlantic shore. We go to one of our favorite beaches and pick a spot near the water. I look out and watch the waves as they crash and bring the water’s edge closer and closer to us since high tide is approaching. I remember fondly my favorite summer job when I worked at Jones Beach out on Long Island for six summers between high school and college graduation and beyond. I continued working there after graduation instead of looking for a job and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I just took some time off, worked hard at the beach, got a great tan and after the summer season ended, I started to try to figure out what I was going to do. A few months later I had my first real job, a career-starting job and I’ve always looked back on that decision to wait and just figure things out until the right job came along as sublime.
Now the incoming waves are a threat, the heroic beaches of my youth will one day be flooded over as the tides rise and rise and we all go into retreat mode from climate change. There are few things more powerful than the oceans. The sun.
We enjoy our day, put on our lotion, go for a walk on the beach, get a bite to eat on the boardwalk. I take it all in: the people, the gulls and terns, the little kids building their first sand castles, couples strolling hand in hand along the water’s edge. Later the sun begins dipping down and we gather up our chairs and towels and tote bag and walk back to the car.
It’s been a great day. The sun was hot and the breeze was just right. On the way home we stop for ice cream and order more decadently than usual – we both get towering ice cream sundaes and enjoy eating them outside the shop under an umbrella. My wife turns to me and says, “I’ll never be able to eat dinner later.” And I just say, “This is dinner.” She smiles and we are soon on our way again, wondering what our next adventure will be.
A lick returns to me:
Well I’ve been out walking
I don’t do too much talking these days.
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do.
Meanwhile back at the beach a child, perhaps a boy or a girl, stares out into the ocean, the setting sun will be on the child’s west. That child and all their friends will be facing a shrinking world as the melting glaciers and arctic ice continue their relentless assault on our oceans and their gradually rising sea levels. Perhaps that child will one day figure out how to reverse climate change or at least mitigate it so they can continue to frolic at the beach before the water’s edge is too far inland to be beaches anymore. Or maybe that child will write a song, a song that comes from an epiphany, a vision of the future seen while looking out into the white tops of the curling waves and the changing colors of the sunset. Soon the sunset will settle into the horizon and all that will be left on the beach will be the trash and discarded blankets and memories and the gathering darkness. Perhaps a moonrise will come.
Chris Ebel
7/22/22
Photo credit: @peejnl
Lyrics: Jackson Browne