Tag: travel

Deconstructed S’mores: Vacation Skirmishes (5)

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First, that scooter he bought to ride around with June. Then showing off at beach yoga. Anyone could have predicted what would come next.

Facebook posts. Many. Of his kid and his wife, at the volcano and the waterfall…OMG, JUNE IS SNORKELING!

Worst of all, selfies from the golf course.

The only pics left in the camera were of food. Sure, you could have tasted that brick of flaming marshmallow flanked by banana ice cream and an elegant pile of graham cracker crumbs right through the video. But he had to maintain a shadow of his fiction. That cool reserve.

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Vacation Skirmishes (4): On the Last Morning, Julie Slept In

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Back home dudes shame him with handstands on the way down to chaturanga. On the beach he’s the only one jumping up to complete the vinyasas.

So he becomes that guy, rising unbidden from bridge into full wheel and doing a sweet, solitary shoulder stand before savasana.

After class he presents, sweaty and sandy, for an attaboy.

But teacher Whipple congratulates himself. “Dude you’re here without your wife? I’m super impressed! I converted you to yoga!”

Denied his dose of praise, McCormick smiles and nods and walks into the waves, which are cool and soothing, just like the day before.

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Vacation Skirmishes (3): Because of the Flies

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At beach yoga McCormick checked the other towels. Sunburned ankles, vanilla thighs, sandy glutes. But no buzzing and slapping. The carrion call was for him.

Probably because of the knee he skinned falling of his scooter last week. (Oh, Mikey, remember how you reviled grownups on scooters?)

New flesh came off like pudding skin in the hot-tub. Left a puffy yellow glob. The flies thought he was dead already.

Ten hours later, while June naps, he runs Makena Road. Left his glasses in the room. Can’t read the heart monitor. But he feels fast and hot, even this close to sunset.

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Barely Sunrise

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After the morning race for chairs, from which Julie emerges with four under an umbrella, away from the smell of the grill, McCormick remembers rising early in Laguna Beach to claim the curtained couch by that pool. Because his sister-in-law needed privacy and the softest seat.

He’s glad Julie, helping June into a shimmering mermaid suit she bought her on the way to breakfast, doesn’t hear the women in the row ahead describing elaborate exploratory, the chance of biopsy.

Why do they sit together, leisure and mutation?  And, as June asks often, what do you look like when you’re dead?

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The Crucial Third Wheel: Vacation Skirmishes (1)

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“Julie, Jesus! Go!”

“He sees us, Michael. Stop barking.”

“When I fear for our lives, I bark.”

Oh my word, this is the fourth time today. I don’t even know before I say it that I am going to say:

“That’s enough! Next time decide not to argue before we get in the car!”

Mommy says, “If your father could calm down…”

Daddy says, “Sorry, June Bug. We’ll do better.”

I guess better means not talking for like ten or twelve minutes and then asking each other how much it costs to buy the houses we just keep driving past.

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The Road Not Given

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Their visit to the funky Northwest recalls the disappointment of his beloved alma mater almost making him faculty when he finished his Ph.D.

Almost burns.

But if he’d gotten that job, and not stayed in New York and found Julie again, where would the life force that is their daughter have manifested?

In the Peconic Bay mansion of a German fund manager Julie met at a private equity conference? Crammed into a two-bedroom bungalow with McCormick and a grad student who dropped out when she got pregnant?

No. Those are stories. Really, without this overcast day, June wouldn’t be anywhere.

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(Almost) Getaway Day

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McCormick returns from the morning run with a glad heart. In two days they fly west.

Oh, sweet reprieve!

Then he watches the English bulldog from 3-J (Cromwell) pissing on the planter out front. That will smell good later.

A predictable blip, but he’s irritated. Why must we pack so early? Julie makes several lists as June drags everything she can reach from her closet.

“That many dresses?”

“In case I eat cake and pie and tarts all at once again.”

“Pardon?”

She spreads her arms, New Yorker born and bred. “What? I throw up at weddings. That’s my thing.”

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