Tag: family

I woke up yesterday in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, clutching a soggy sweater, waves slapping my face. 

I gathered my energy and paddled with my arms and kicked with my legs until I came to a nearby cable twice as thick as my torso. I wrapped around half of it and my soggy shoes slid back into the water. 

Someone in a scuba mask touched my shoulder, their lips curled around a black tube. Water streamed down their face mask, obscuring their eyes. I climbed higher and higher on a cable until I could see out over part of the bay. It may have been a mirage but I swear that I spotted a whale. 

And now I lay here in an empty room. Machines buzz at my head and a chair sits empty in one corner. I would like to know what happened but, in the meantime, I quietly feel all of the parts of my body still working. I can’t remember who should be sitting in that chair but I am sure that it will come to me soon. 

After a while the door opens and my mom steps in. Behind her is my five year old daughter. They both smile as they sit on my bed. My daughter is excited to tell me about the best lunch she has ever had just now at some place down the street. The calamari was so good and so salty, she says. This makes me smile and the giant love I have for her pounds in my chest.

Later, when I am discharged, fully clothed, dry, and rested, my daughter and I settle back into our routine. I pack her lunch for kindergarten and stop at a coffee shop on my way to work, just as I did before. I drink coffee, work, come home and make us dinner. One day her dad calls to invite us to come see him. He lives in another city, in another state. We used to live there, too, but now we just visit sometimes. My daughter is excited to see him, he who she barely knows but loves dearly. I am excited, too. 

On the plane my daughter wears sunglasses and carries an adult sized purse. An older man with white hair and money hands stares at us. He introduces himself and begins to ask a lot of questions while being sure to drop little hints about his successful wine business. I smile and nod while my daughter writes in her notebook. 

While my daughter visits with her dad I spend time with old friends and revisit old habits. I meet a friend at a bar and I feel at home in the darkness. My friend steps out for a few minutes to buy some weed because he doesn’t really drink and would rather get high. I feel drops of water on my shoulder and turn around to see a man in a wetsuit standing behind me. He opens his mouth and out pours salt water in a stream. Another man, who has been sitting down the bar, gets up, shuts the man’s spewing mouth and puts him in the fish tank out back.

My rescuer wipes the seat next to me dry with a bar towel and sits down. He has a sarcastic and dark sense of humor and a half smile that makes my breath draw in deeper than I knew possible. When my friend returns he leaves soon after as I am wrapped in the arms of new conversation and end up going home with this man. 

When we return from our trip it is no longer home. Home is back to that other city, in that other state. Home is closer to him. I call him GW, short for Guitar Wizard. This is one of our inside jokes. I have a shirt made and sent to him with “GW” written on it so that he will remember me. Two weeks later I quit my job and give notice to my landlord. I am in love and we move back. 

We move in with my daughter’s dad. As roomates. It is the same house that he went to in secret, back when we were together, to visit his girlfriend. It is the same home where I took my two year old daughter by stroller to throw the dried out wedding bouquet on the doorstep after discovering his secret. The pain of the past now replaced by new life and belly laugh at the turn of events.

The house is a broken mess full of leftovers from former roommates, girlfriends, mold and a food cart truck parked out front with a painted medusa head on the side. I no longer walk but float about as my dreams come true in the arms of GW. 

As with my other dreams, this one eventually ends. One day, in his apartment, my mouth opens and out comes  a judgmental comment about how he only has salt and pepper in his kitchen. I declare that an adult man should have more spices. This is the beginning of the end. I move on, righteous in my conviction that he should get it together and go spice shopping and come back to me only after he has a formidable selection. 

It turns out that my heart is broken and I regret letting GW go. Time passes and one day we meet up. We end up drunk and have sex. He tells me as we lay together that he is in another relationship and cannot see me again. I am distraught and send him away in anger. A few weeks later I am pregnant. When I tell him he assures me that he will give me money for the abortion. To get the cash I meet him at a corner near his apartment. My daughter is with me as I drive by, roll down my window and quickly grab an envelope from his hand as he stands at the curb. We drive away and I never see him again. 

At the clinic the technician squirts lube on my belly and asks me if I would like to see the fetus. I turn my head and say no. I shut my eyes and listen to the sound of the machine, pulsing like the radar of a submarine. I go home,  take the first pill and spend the day bleeding on my bathroom floor. It is my 35th birthday. The pipes in my old bathroom moan, echoing inside my empty gut. I recognize the sound as that  of a lonely, lost whale down way too deep.

I think about my almost baby as I flush the toilet. The sun is out but I can only see deep red-black waves coming over me, crushing my flesh.