A little background: this is a story I wrote for a magazine submission that didn’t end up getting published. I re-worked it a little and decided to post it here. If anyone reads this and has thoughts for me I would love to hear them. This blog is a place for me to post my writing and encourage myself to keep creating, in an effort for me to discover my strengths. Any constructive criticism is welcome, as well as suggestion for how I can better develop my writing style.
The picture told the entire story. It sat in a weathered frame, a wooden one, oak perhaps. The type you can pick up at a second-hand store, only 50 cents. It has seen some better days since it last sat fresh and polished on the shelf of a retail store that’s now closed. This frame holds the story of a family beneath its dusty glass. It shows us that last normal outing before the thread tying them together became too thin. And it’s only too easy to imagine what happened in the years after it was taken.
They are at the beach. You can tell it’s already mid-summer by the mix-and-match tan lines and the number of half-naked children playing on the shore behind them. There is a lifeguard tower to the right, faint, but you can still make out the two lifeguards lounging on the railing chatting up girls in string bikinis. They are bronzed, muscled from swimming, and emanating that adolescent invincibility that is so elusive past the age of twenty-five. They are presumably enjoying their last summer job before they go off to college. The tower bears a faded number nine, in desperate need of a new coat of paint. The tower is falling apart, but every year it houses new teenagers who spend their summer lifesaving and flirting. Displayed front and center are a family, who traveled to this beach because it was close; the cold water and the sand littered with cigarette butts is free and easy entertainment for a few hours.
Two parents sit side by side on a ratty Mexican blanket, smiles pasted on their faces and hands near, fingertips missing each other by inches. The man, in his late 30s, has tanned skin, wrinkles layering his forehead, and the signs of a newly balding hairline clearly emerging. He’s wearing faded, frayed swim trucks and an olive green pullover, the sunglasses of a disappearing era propped on his nose. His wife relaxes next to him, she in her early 30s, with freckled, sun-kissed skin and a curly mop of brown hair. It’s clear she relishes her time there by the way her shoulders slouch back and she tilts her head slightly towards the sun. Her basic mauve one-piece swimsuit and tan zip-up sweatshirt bear signs of light stains and pulling. Three kids dig in the sand in front of them, using a broken, plastic sandcastle kit. The oldest, a girl of about nine, is stopped mid-toss of a discarded handful of sand, the moat she’s creating around one side already starting to cave in. Her red bikini is covered in wet sand and there are streaks on her face where she had to wipe at her hair. Her brothers help her, a pair of six and five, building half-molded towers while crouched on the other side of the moat; their swim trucks heavy with water and falling off their bony hips. The three of them have signs of sunburn already rising on their shoulders and cheeks. The photographer is a mystery: a friend, a stranger, one of those lifeguards?
The timestamp in the bottom right-hand corner tells us that it was taken in July of 2004. It was snapped on a disposable camera, amid other photos taken that summer. Some more of the beach, perhaps a trip to the aquarium or the children’s museum? And on those special occasions, a day at the county fair, inhaling fried food and whining for one last over-priced game, complaining when they once again lose the stuffed animal they so desperately want. Those kind of activities that cost little, but keep the kids entertained for the day. The family’s summers are filled with easy, sun-filled ways to distract and exhaust, so the reality of their lives is far and distant.
The family dutifully delivered the camera to a Costco, and picked up the prints a few days later by searching through the stacks of various other’s vacation photos. Last name, first name, there it is between the Jones’s and the Kellerman’s. They flip through them while they buy their bulk cereal and 32-pack of toilet paper. The kids beg and plead for the giant tub of Redvines, and their mom says no mechanically, the old fight ingrained in their routine. They see the giant hot dogs and slushies at the food court and look at their mom, pleading in their eyes. She sighs and tells them they have food at home. The kids fight and run and tangle all the way to the car. Mom commands them in, one by one, like clowns filling a tiny car at the circus. She looks like an exhausted ringmaster, tired of the same old performance every weekend.
The picture is brought home among the groceries and the mail. In the house it goes, in between bills and coupons. For two weeks, the envelope containing this picture and dozens of the others depicting the joys of summer is left forgotten on the kitchen table; until Mom has a free moment to clear off the table and sees the white envelope containing memories of that sunny summer. She sighs as she flips through the pictures, longing for summer days away from extracurriculars and conflicting school schedules.
The family finally digs the oak frame out of the Rubbermaid reserved for décor put away for cases such as these. As they sort through the photos, they wonder which one will be chosen to hang on the wall. They pick this one because it was the last time they remember feeling unburdened that summer. The other pictures are packed away, put in a container to be flicked through in a couple of years when nostalgia hits or left to melt into the other pictures and peeled apart when one is needed for a new album.
Now every time they pass that picture, they remember the sun on their backs and sand stuck in awkward places. Years later, the children have hazy, clouded memories of a day at the beach, where playing in the sand was the most fun activity of the day. Playing in the sand instead of playing house and pretending not to hear the arguments. Their mom remembers a day of laying on her back, closing her eyes, and listening to the rushing wind and crashing waves in her ears. Hearing the ocean talk to her instead of hearing all the excuses for why things aren’t working out. Their dad remembers a day of sun, dreams of boating out on the water, catching fish that he doesn’t know how to cook. Dreaming of another reality instead of planning for the one in front of him.
Now this picture, sitting in its oak frame, has been taken off the wall and lies in a box. A cardboard box filled with other pictures, other memories lying in their respective wooden frames. A box labeled, “to be decided.” The family has a decision to make, and the picture has been caught in the middle. The children, now years older don’t play anymore, they have grown up trying to decide whose side to choose. The days of playing in the sand, under the sun, have passed them by. Their parents, whose lives revolved around them for so long, are now halted by the decision to revolve their lives around themselves. Their mom is done talking and looks to the future as time for herself and her care. Their dad is struck by the realization that his days are his own again, and he can fill them fully with the hobbies that he half-heartedly gave up.
In the years that passed since that summer the photo was taken, the family’s relationships started becoming more complicated and more strained. The parents couldn’t spend a day at the summer together without arguments and tense-filled silences. The trips became the photo on the wall, dusty and forgotten and a memory of the past. The decision loomed before them: do they continue on in the exhausted, disconnected way they always have because it’s expected? Or do they take their separate ways despite the consequences? This decision lay on the kitchen table among the forgotten ads and bills, much like the picture years before; until someone decided which decision to put on the wall. They see it among the other frames, a few inches away from the picture from that one summer. The picture has been taken out of the box, just as the decision has been made. If they are taken off the wall again, picture and decision will be put in a box marked, “to keep.”
stories seldom told 