WATER BABY

         'The ocean is down the road, just over the horizon, but here’s the on-ramp to the Parkway and it’s getting late. The rain has stopped but there is no sun. To hell with it, I’m going home.' So I missed my appointment with the Atlantic again. I had the chance to see it two years ago when I last visited Bill and Carol, but like this time, the siren call of the sign reading "Parkway North" led me away. I wonder if I will ever see it again in my lifetime?

         From the Parkway bridge over the Great Egg Inlet, I can see to the left the Beesley’s Point Bridge that carries Route 9 over the same body of water. It looks no different than it did when Morgan and I drove over it in April twenty-plus years ago on our way to dinner at the Tuckahoe Inn. Back then it was the same rickety bridge that my father had driven us over in the late fifties. Dad seemed to know all the dinky bridges of Atlantic and Cape May counties. To the right in the distance I can see the 59th Street bridge, as we called it, leading from Strathmere to Ocean City on the Ocean Drive. Unlike in Dad’s time, it is now an arched bridge that needn’t be opened for boats. On the other side of the bridge is the Atlantic, but it is too far away to see.

         Ten years ago Morgan and I drove over it on our way home to Philadelphia from Cape May one fine October day. Her heart was functioning then. She sat on the beach in Cape May drawing thumbnails for future use. I did my usual beach combing routine, walking a mile or so along the surf and back to her. We ate lunch and then she indulged me a visit to my past when I decided to drive home by way of the Ocean Drive, a road where the speed limit is rarely more than 35 miles per hour.

         Now I only come this way to set up Carol’s computer for data entering projects I mail her. Well, that’s not the only reason. A visit to her house reaffirms values I learned growing up. She and Bill have been married since the late sixties, and seem outrageously happy. They have retired to a house two miles from the beach. They represent good things in my mind; the ocean shouts ‘fear and loathing.’

         If my ship sinks twenty feet from the shore, I will be all right. I think I can swim that far, probably on my back if I remember how. Any distance farther out to sea will have me becoming a feast for the crabs and other denizens of the blue. Growing up in Philadelphia, going to the shore becomes a ritual. Standing in the surf being slammed by breakers is the summer game. Was I three or four when a wave knocked me under and taught me the game wasn’t fun? I have no idea. The memory refuses to come back to me. I assume that is what happened. I do know that in my lexicon, I never ‘went swimming’ but rather was asked if I ‘were going in the water’.

         It wasn’t only oceans that were deadly. I had to be pulled out of a public pool at French Creek State Park in Pennsylvania, to my eight-year old daughter Lixie’s embarrassment. “You go sit with Mommy; I’ll swim on my own.” She joined our cavalcade to the shore every September after Labor Day when the beach fees went away. She would allow me in the surf as long as I had one of our air-filled rafts with me.

         Now on a Thursday in February, I refrained from taking a peek at my old adversary, and as I write this on a Sunday morning, I tremble. My thoughts turn to the irony that Lixie drowned at age thirteen in a storm-swollen body of water termed a ‘run’ that normally would not have wet her calves had she walked across it. I had not even realized this memory was in the back of my mind when I began to set down my meanderings. Words are dangerous substances, almost as dangerous as water.

         I shudder and shift my mind to yesterday’s view of the Hudson. I was at my friend Elizabeth’s house in Ossining. She bought it this past April. Its front windows face directly out on a maintenance yard across the street, but beyond that is the river in all its magnificence. That Sing Sing prison is at the end of the street cannot detract from the beauty.

         This is only the second time I have seen the Hudson from ground level. The other was up the river in Hudson, New York on a sunny Saturday like yesterday. My wife wanted to shop at Walmart. At that time I did not realize Walmart was my fuzzy friend and feared going inside. I took the dog to a boat launch and sat with her watching the river. I had not thought of that memory until I started to write this, but now it is something for my scrapbook. It was not long after that when Morgan learned her heart was failing.

         Elizabeth’s view is serene and fits her life. She travels to Turkey every summer and renders archaeological drawings from a studio on her second floor. She has lived in many apartments since she became my client in 1982. Now she seems to have melded into this gray clapboard house by the water, a mariner of the land home from her digs.

         How I would feel about the river pushing past my door is unclear. At the lake in the Adirondack Mountains I put on a life jacket any time I enter the little boat that carries our cabin’s inhabitants to the public dock two miles away. I was so happy a jeep trail now extends within a mile of the cabin and I will not have to sit in the back operating the Evinrude and worrying that I will tip over. I have never tested the bright orange jacket that is now twenty-seven years old.

         I have suggested to my friend Pam that we spend a few days there this summer. She has her own rendezvous with water. Later this month she is taking a cruise with her brother and sister and their spouses. On the phone she tells me of gowns she has bought for the two formal dinners. Out of a clear sky, she suddenly says, “Why don’t we go on a cruise someday?” I am thrilled with the idea. I have never been on a cruise. We both like the idea of Alaska.

         Then a vision begins to take hold in my mind. It is the night of the Captain’s dinner. Pam enters dressed to the nines in her gown. She is watching for me. There I am, coming in the door. She cringes and starts to laugh uncontrollably. I have dyed my jeans black. I have put on a white starched shirt, tie and black jacket along with black shoes and dark socks. I almost look presentable. Now if I would only remove the bright orange Mae West vest that is tied around me.