Quality Time

From Chicken Soup for the Soul: All in the Family

BY: By Betsy S. Franz

The cure for anything is salt water--sweat, tears, or the sea.
~Isak Dinesen

I had just been through a rough day at work, and all I really wanted to do was stop by the beach on my way home and spend a few relaxing minutes trying to unwind.

When I got there, it seemed like I had made the perfect choice. The sun and the tide were both low, providing a perfect expanse of hard, moist sand that was out of the intense heat that had plagued most of the day. A cool, light breeze had begun to blow, and the beach was quiet and pleasantly deserted.

I set up a chair on the sand and lowered my work-weary body with a tired sigh, mustering up just enough energy to push off my shoes.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the clean, damp ocean air. And as I exhaled, my eyes slowly closing, all the cares and troubles of my day seemed to float out and get carried away into the sea.

With my eyes closed, the sounds of the sea seemed to grow louder, surrounding me, caressing me, and whispering to me with the smooth, slow-motion rush, crash and murmur of the low summer tide. It was such a peaceful sound, almost hypnotizing. What had I been so tense about only moments before? I couldn't remember. I couldn't think of anything but the sound of the waves.

I realized I was almost dozing when a sound to my left broke my reverie. It was the high-pitched sound of seagulls. And then, mingled with the cries of the gulls, I heard the laughter of a small child.
Who was this coming to disturb the first peaceful moments I'd had all day? I lazily opened my eyes and turned toward the sounds.

Down the beach, a man and a young boy stood, laughing playfully as a dozen or so seagulls hovered above them. They appeared to be feeding the birds something from a paper bag, and all of them--the birds, the boy and the man--seemed to be enjoying it immensely. Man and boy would each thrust his hand deep into the bag, bring out their clinched fists, and fling the contents high into the air. And with each fistful, they would look at the birds, then at each other, and laugh with genuine delight as the birds swooped and called and rose again into the air, hovering there, anxiously waiting for the laughter to stop and the food to start flying again.

A father and child sharing some quality time, no doubt, I thought to myself sarcastically, and then I felt a little depressed by my reaction. Such pleasant father/child scenes always made me a little sad, a little jealous, for what I never had as a child. But I sure didn't need these thoughts now, not after the day I'd had. I closed my eyes tightly again and turned back toward the sea.

But it was too late. Bits and pieces of unhappy childhood memories were already pushing their way into my mind, forming into the mental motion picture that I knew all too well--my mind's well-worn saga of a childhood with an alcoholic father. First came the scene of my father passed out drunk in front of the TV, nearly setting his chair on fire with the lit cigarette in his dangling hand. Then the scenes of angry outbursts, played over and over, sometimes accentuated with slammed doors, knocked-over furniture or squealing tires as he sped away, hurrying to find refuge in some dark , inviting bar.

And then, the grand finale: the time he came home so drunk that he didn't even know that he had just been in a car accident, although blood was running down his face in tiny rivulets. I locked myself in my room that day, afraid of the man with the unknowing stare who was stumbling around in our house. That was the last straw, apparently, for my mother. My father was asked to pack his bags and leave our family, to find another home. It was for the good of us kids, she said. And not long afterward, my father died, alone and hundreds of miles away from us. No, "quality time" was not something I had much of as a child.

I shook my head sharply and opened my eyes, trying to stop this melodrama in my mind. My breathing began to relax as I focused on the sights around me. There were the waves, still crashing. There was the sand, still damp beneath my feet. And down the beach, there was the boy and the man.
The boy was still looking skyward, though the bag was apparently empty now, hanging limply at his side. The seagulls were breaking up, some flying toward the sea, while others landed cautiously nearby. Just as the boy seemed to be losing his interest in the birds, the man began running and flapping his arms, chasing the few brave gulls that had landed on the beach. Squeals of laughter rang out as the boy excitedly followed, laughing and squawking and flapping after the birds.

I laughed to myself now and let my eyes drift shut once more. The child's laughter carried on the wind and drifted into my mind, echoing there, growing louder and louder until it seemed to fill my whole head. Such laughter! Such pure and simple joy.

Slowly, a new image began to form in my mind: a young girl propped up in bed, her pixie haircut framing a face lit up with joy and laughter. The image began to gain clarity, as if being focused by a giant mental lens. I could see a familiar pink bedroom trimmed in lace, stuffed toys long ago forgotten, and a plump, freckled face that I knew had to be mine. The laughter echoed again, and the image drifted back to include a dark-haired, handsome man sitting at the foot of the bed, telling a wonderful made-up bedtime story of friendly creatures, and a prince and princess who lived in a far-off and exciting kingdom. And as the story ended, the child realized that she was the princess and threw her arms around the man's neck and squealed, "And you were my prince, right, Daddy?"

Other memories came flooding back to me now as the man and the boy on the beach continued to run, laugh, and chase crabs and waves. It was as if the boy's laughter was pushing into the farthest reaches of my mind, discovering memories that had long since been buried.

Very clearly now I could remember my father working for hours in our basement, meticulously setting up tunnels and mountains and trees on a room-sized train set as my brothers and I waited eagerly for the first running of the train.

I remembered the pride in my father's eyes as he taught the teenage me to drive a stick shift. And though I stalled and stripped and tortured his car, he never got mad at me. He never yelled or got impatient. He had that same loving smile that I saw on the face of the father on the beach. It was a smile that beamed with love and joy and fatherly pride.

The tide was coming in now, but I sat motionless as I saw it catch my shoes and inch them up the sand. I couldn't move. I felt drained from the intensity of the emotions I was feeling.

He was a good father once. I could remember that now. What had happened to him to make him want to escape into a bottle? I stared out into the sea and thought of the things that had sometimes driven me to drink in my adult years. Had he felt the same feelings of loneliness and inadequacy that I sometimes felt? How could I know the challenges he faced, the loneliness he felt from a loveless marriage, the fears he must have felt when he lost his job with a family still to support? I couldn't have known. I was too young to know because he had died many years ago when all I felt for him was resentment and shame and embarrassment. I was still too young to understand his pain and frailties.

On the beach, the man and the boy were nearing me now, their feet splish-splashing in the waves as the setting sun cast their shadows out upon the sea. They were quiet now, holding hands, gently swinging their arms, dragging their feet through ankle-deep water. The fading sunlight seemed to outline them against the sea, and I thought I could almost read their minds--the cluttered, tense, worried adult thoughts of the man and the playful, carefree innocence of the child. And just then, as they passed in front of me, I heard the child's quiet voice as he said, "I love you, Daddy."

I smiled as a feeling of warmth and peace began to grow inside of me--a peace I hadn't felt for many years. And as I closed my eyes once more, I saw my father and me walking hand-in-hand down the beach, swinging our arms and splashing through waves.

"I love you, Daddy," I whispered aloud. And somewhere, carried on the wind and only slightly muffled by the sound of the surf, I'm sure I heard his reply.

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