It’s four in the morning, and I’m sitting in my car staring out over the ocean by the Santa Monica pier with the sunrise right around the corner.
It’s a funny thing, the ocean. A force strong enough to destroy civilizations, create weather patterns that lead to people being snowed in for months, and yet children run along the shore creating memories to get them through the greatest heart breaks they will ever know.
I remember being one of those kids. I would build sand castles, kicking up saltwater, splash into the current as I’d run straight into the relentless tides which would move the earth beneath my feet. My mother would call me back to our towels we laid out where she would sit reading her books every so often. She always seemed like she thought these days were never quite what she was hoping for.
It was one of those days with mom on the beach when she told me my father had left us for good. I didn’t even know what she meant by that at the time. I thought she was silly for crying, “Daddy always leaves for work though, right?” I asked her. But, she wouldn’t stop crying. She just grabbed me by my waist, pulled me close and sobbed, letting her tears mix in with the sunscreen she put on me. I wrapped my arms as far around her as I could reach, and even though I still didn’t really know what she was talking about, I could feel my tears dancing down my cheeks and meeting hers.
I never knew why he left, my mother would change stories every other time I asked. One time, she told me he left for a different job and he couldn’t bring us with him. Another time, she told me he didn’t have enough money to try to raise me. I never really thought about it too much. It was just one of those things that stay in the back of your head because it doesn’t really change anything. Either way, mom and I were able to eat, find places to live, and not always have to sleep in the car between places. We stayed around the area more or less. I guess I just didn’t really know any better.
But once mom passed, I was positive I’d never find out the truth of the matter. I was twenty-eight when I spoke to her for the last time. I had tried to make a decent life for the two of us when she got sick at first. I just didn’t want her to remember the last five years of her life as being the times she suffered from her illness. I wanted her to just have a good time for once in her life, before it was too late. I didn’t want her last memories to be trying to come up with a reason for something she didn’t understand herself.
She caught something the doctors weren’t familiar with. We had to wait for whatever it was she had to get bad enough to bring her into the emergency room just to get another test to see if there was anything they could do. After the third year of trying to bring herself to the edge of death, I think she just got tired. I could see it in her eyes. She just didn’t want to have to keep marching on. I guess neither one of us did.
I’m sitting here at four o’clock in the morning staring out over the ocean by the Santa Monica pier with the sunrise around the corner. I’m thirty years old and it hits me.
Everybody leaves.
And now, it’s time to just put my car into gear, and leave here for good.
Comments