The Beach!!
August 15, 2010
My family loves the beach. I drive, or Chi Trinh drives. The whole clan comes. We feast on fruits de mer, lay on the beach, and play in the waves. My mom always swims in shorts and a tank top, with her hair in pigtails. Grandma walks on the shores, collecting seaweed, which she literally dries and eats when we get home. My sister jogs (and sometimes even does sit ups and push ups just to mortify me). Chi Trinh and I have good talks on the way home, while the family sleeps in the back.
When we were little, it was pretty important to Mom and Dad that we go fishing in Texas City, Galveston or Freeport every weekend, no matter how much they worked that week. Despite their working two or three jobs a piece and almost never being home during our waking hours (Grandma watched us), we were roused on Saturday mornings at 4am, herded to the backseat of the Lincoln Towncar, and woke up just before sunrise to tote Dad's tacklebox along the sandy shores. Joe and I got big fishing nets, which would we drag through the water at low tide, as we waded out to the sandbars. We always got great stuff: baby blowfish, small fish, cool seaweed, and all the interesting garbage Houstonians throw in their ocean. The beach has always been a big deal.
Mom and Dad took the lady-with-the-baby's family to the beach a couple years ago. They went to Atlantic City. They had lived in Philadelphia for nearly three years, and had never been to the Jersey Shore. Mom bought the (4 year old) baby her first bathing suit (they had never had the opportunity to swim in a swimming pool since arriving, either), some sunglasses, and a beach tote. The little girl beamed when she showed me the great photo book Dad made for them - sand castles, walking in the surf, people and objects buried under lots of sand. They were very happy.
It has been five years since then, I think. I saw them in July and asked the baby if they had been to the beach since then, and she said no (!!). So, we marked the calendar. I arrived at 8AM, as their parents and I had planned. No one answered the door for a while. The baby opened the door with sleepy eyes. She looked really tired - like she had been crying before bed.
"Do you still want to go to the beach?"
"Yes," as she headed back up the steps and promptly fell back into bed.
I walked over to her brother's room and popped my head in. "Wake up; we're going to the beach. Call your cousins."
When I first met them, they rented a cramped, dingy place on North Broad and all slept in one room - brother on the top bunk, mom and baby on the bottom, and the dad on a hammock. I had had talks with the mom of some weekends back then, when the parents went hungry to make sure the kids would have enough. Back then, the mom was leaving home at 4AM to look for day labor gigs. In the spring, when the ground was still sometimes frozen, she was out planting flowers and shrubs in suburban business campuses and apartment complexes.
Over the past year, the mom and dad secured reliable jobs that will give them skills they can take anywhere: the mom became a certified nail technician, and the dad received certifications through his employer, an auto repair shop. The dad and son both have driver licenses, and they even bought a new car! In May, I attended their housewarming - complete with Catholic service, priest blessing, and Viet feast. Their two-story house is beautiful! Four bedrooms, living, dining, patio, and front and back yards, near their church.
As I paced the hall between their bedroom doors, nagging them to get out of bed, I couldn't believe how things had changed in such a short time. Eventually, two teenage boys, a nine year old princess, their dad, and I were finally on our way to Ocean City.
After my own heart, the baby was obsessed with sea shells and never stopped looking for them. We collected at least fifty. Seeing how thrilled I was with the teeny tiny ones she managed to find, she kept finding teensier and tinier ones; I could hold twenty of the shells in the palm of one hand.
The dad waded in the water, while the baby and her brother made sand castles. The cousin slept on a blanket the entire time. I swam in the huge, crushing waves alone for an hour and a half before I could convince the brother to come in. He loved it for about thirty minutes and then went to sunbathe. The baby and I played in the surf. She let me coax her into deeper and deeper water, until we were finally standing where all the other little girls were standing. We practiced "swimming" and jumping in little tiny waves. She shreiked with delight the entire time, laughing, and absolutely winning my heart when she yelled, "This . is . so . incredible!" and "I LOVE the beach!"
The mom, of course, was working. She has to work in the summer, when it's busiest, to make up for the slow business in the winter. We get that line a lot from our mom, which is why we go to Seattle over holidays, to work in the nail salon during "vacation". The mom called a few times and delighted at her daughter's updates. She spoke to me briefly one of the times, to thank me for taking them.
"You know, she had a fit last night when I told her I have to work to make money, so I'm not going to the beach with you tomorrow. She cried for hours, begging me to come to the beach."
I mentioned something to the baby and her brother as we drove away from the beach: "You know, your mom said she really misses you today. Some day, you will take her to the beach," nudging the brother who was riding shotgun. He laughed his goofy, smily laugh, knowingly.
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