The March Hare

Last week my dad called me.
"Hey Sunshine!" he said. "How about you tell your job that your appendix is burst and you can't come in for a couple days, and we'll go to the beach."

"I like my job, Dad. I'd rather not get fired."

"Oh, come on. They ain't going to fire you."

My dad said this as though he knew it for a fact.

I compromised with him. He picked me up after work on Tuesday, and we rode on his Harley to Destin, Florida, where my uncle has a time-share he hasn't been able to use. We ate dinner at the Waffle House. My dad told jokes for three straight hours. My dad made friends with our surly Waffle House waitress.

The next morning I got up at seven and went into the ocean at seven-thirty. For anyone who has never been to the Gulf of Mexico: our beaches have the softest, most powdery snow-white sand imaginable, our water is a perfectly clear green, the color you think emeralds ought to be. At seven-thirty, there are no waves, three are no other people, there are no strong currents to pull you sideways down the beach. I walked into the water and was soon in above my head, but I could see everything on the bottom. In fact, I felt very afraid, because I knew that this was too good to be true, that some nasty sea-creature was waiting below me to sting or bite or maim in some way. The water was like green glass.

We rode away from Destin at eleven o'clock that morning, because I had to go to work that afternoon. My dad was sad when he left me at my house, he didn't want to be at the beach alone. I told him to go to a bookstore and get a few books and read them on the beach. That sounds like heaven to me.

My dad didn't do that.

My dad still can't believe that neither myself nor my sister had the gumption to just take a week off of work to keep our dad company at the beach. My dad can't believe how boring my sister and I are. Boring, and functional. One day my dad will have to accept us as we are. We've accepted him as he is for some time now, after all.