Scenes from a Beach

Most people Jen knew marked the passage of the years in Christmases or birthdays. But for some reason, she’d always found it more appropriate to mark hers in Independence Days. After all, it was cold at Christmas time, a time to celebrate inside because it was too frozen outside to do anything else. And on birthdays, you really just got older.

But Independence Day was another matter entirely.

July Fourth came at the ideal time of year. The chill dampness of spring was long over with by then, but the dog days of summer were still far enough away to make it pointless to worry about them just yet.

The child Jen used to be loved running around free in denim cut-offs and comfortable old T-shirts once July arrived. And on Independence Day she’d go with her family to the beach, her parents would grab a spot as far away from everyone else as possible, and they’d enjoy a picnic together as the sun went down. Then Jen’s father would wrap the entire family in thick, quilted blankets against the cold as they waited for the city to start the fireworks show over the water.

By the time the first firework exploded into a glowing blossom of color and sparkle, Jen was usually so excited she could barely sit still. Ten small toes digging eagerly into the sand, savoring the way it was damp and cool if you dug down far enough below the surface. A small hand clutching the remains of her second sandwich. Her nose full of the scent of ocean salt mixed with cordite. Her ears full of the cheers that rode the cool evening wind, little fragments of other people’s joy and delight that mirrored Jen’s own.

And Jen would watch the incredible symphony of color and fire unfolding in the sky, each sparkling explosion doubled and reflected on the dark, inky surface of the ocean below. And her heart would fill with gladness as she pulled her mother’s old quilt tighter around her shoulders and thought of the year to come.

The Fourth of July seemed to have taken on an entirely new level of meaning by the summer Jen had turned fourteen. The year before, she’d still been content for her world to stop and start with her family. But this year, Jen’s eyes had been gazing out the window with increasing frequency, searching the streets for something she couldn’t yet identify.

And her daily stream of involuntary thought had been turning outward more often, too. Outward toward the rest of the great, wide world. She’d think of all the people she’d never met and all the places she’d never seen – like Norway, which she’d fallen in love with during a National Geographic special she’d seen recently. She’d think of the people she might be someday, as she had become suddenly, painfully aware that she wouldn’t always be fourteen.

And that evening on the beach, Jen was aware that some of the magic had gone out of the family beach picnic she’d always looked forward to. It was like she was suddenly seeing too much of the world around her.

Earlier that afternoon, she’d noticed just how tired her mother had seemed while she was making the many sandwiches they’d all eat for dinner that night. How the lines around her mother’s mouth and at the edges of her eyes were starting to deepen. And she noticed it in her father, too, later on at the beach. In the way his corny jokes and cheerfulness seemed somewhat forced, as if there were a whole other ocean of feeling surging underneath that he didn’t want Jen to see.

Part of her wondered innocently how long things had been that way, but another part already knew that the answer was “always”.

She dug her bare toes into the sand the way she always had and wondered about the extent to which her parents acted out the details of their lives every day. She watched the sky light up in a flurry of cobalts, scarlets, and golds and wondered why exactly she’d always thought Independence Day sandwiches tasted better than sandwiches eaten on any other day when they were exactly the same sandwiches.

And then the strange, uncomfortable veil of reality temporarily lifted. For a few precious moments more, the fireworks seemed as bright and mysterious as they always had. But then the show was over, and Jen was left with all these new thoughts and feelings that felt too big for her still-growing body and mind.

Jen wasn’t sure how it was already time for another Fourth of July, but she supposed it had something to do with having been so busy this year. She’d graduated last month, so that was it for Jen and high school. And now she was trying to figure out “what to do with her life,” as her parents and teachers had loved to put it.

That was something that really struck Jen as funny. According to everyone else, she was too young to know she was into girls and not guys. Certainly too young to know she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Kim. She wasn’t even “old enough” to drink beer or to vote. Yet people wanted answers from her about the rest of her life.

But, on a brighter note, the Fourth of July was her holiday now.

Once Jen had gotten old enough to want to come to the beach and watch the fireworks with her friends instead of her family, her parents had stopped coming altogether. In fact, they’d stopped doing much of anything together. And Jen often got the feeling that that didn’t bother them at all, that maybe they had just been waiting for Jen to be big enough.

Jen’s father was rarely home anymore, always looking for another excuse to work late or to be away on the weekends. And Jen’s mother had cut her hair short, taken up painting, and opened an art gallery in town – “finding herself”, as Jen had heard her put it one night when she’d overheard her parents talking.

Jen wasn’t even sure she knew her parents anymore, if she ever had. And she was fairly certain they didn’t know her. So this year, she’d decided Independence Day would be for her and for Kim. She’d packed a picnic herself – a variety of sandwiches and a few beers she’d snuck into the basket from her dad’s not-so-secret garage stash. She’d chosen the blankets, her favorites with the little strawberry bushes around the edges.

And somehow, as she sat on the beach with Kim next to her and the chilly evening wind whistling in her ears, the Fourth of July seemed underscored by magic again. Not quite the way it had when she was a kid, but this was a far cry from the staleness that had long ago begun to creep into the celebrations she’d shared with her parents when she was little. This was a more mature version of that old magic – one that left lots of room to grow instead of feeling a little bit smaller every year.

As the sky began to fill with fireworks bursting to life in every color, Jen realized her heart was full. She was scared of the open abyss that was the future, but also excited about it, as she could fill it with anything she’d liked. And the glow of first, new love had a way of making everything seem a little brighter and sweeter, like honey drizzled over the top of warm toast.

It took a moment for Jen to remember exactly where she was when her eyes fluttered open. She’d been having the most incredible dream – a dream where she was flying over the countryside in Norway, of all places. And it had been realistic, too, which seemed embarrassingly silly now that she was wide awake and firmly planted in reality again.

Today was the Fourth of July, as she now recalled. Beside her, Ben was still fast asleep as he often was on Saturdays. Downstairs, Jen could hear the kids arguing over something in the kitchen, as well as the sound of one cartoon or another blaring away to itself on the television set.

With a sigh, she made her way downstairs as she did every morning, and the kids virtually attacked her. She’d have thought that by this age, they’d have the presence of mind to at least pour themselves some cereal on the weekends. But she swallowed her frustration long enough to pour it for them herself, turning the volume down on her morning at least somewhat.

As Jen started making the sandwiches for that night’s pre-fireworks beach picnic, her mind thought back briefly to Independence Days past when she was a kid. Life had seemed so much simpler then. And then later, so full of possibility.

And then the disappointments started. The string of partners who’d grown to take her for granted before ultimately walking out on her altogether, starting with her first real love, Kim. The series of jobs and career choices that never quite worked out. The dreams she’d had that withered on the vine one after the other as she coasted into the autumn of her life. The things she’d never done and the places she’d never visited.

And now she was here. It’s not that she had a bad life. It was just that it didn’t really feel like hers. Ultimately, she’d done everything her parents had told her to do, hoping against hope that maybe they really did know what they were talking about after all.

She’d married Ben after letting her mother talk her into believing women were just a phase for her. She’d stayed in her hometown her entire life, abandoning Norway as the silly fantasy other people assured her it was. She’d had the kids despite not really wanting to be a mother, choosing to believe other people when they insisted things would all fall in place once the children were actually here.

And all of those choices had led her to where she was later on that same evening. On the beach beside a husband who was kind, but not entirely right for her, and children that confused her more often than they delighted her. And as she watched the fireworks explode over the water, she realized none of this made sense to her anymore.

What a waste of gunpowder and sky, she thought, biting into a carbon copy of the same sandwich she’d eaten countless times before.