The Waves are Moving Me

Went to the beach with my family today. Our family never does anything like this - not open spaces with sun, where things are disorderly and sand can be tracked. Our family is neat and has uniforms. Not unicorns. But we were celebrating the cousin being in town from Sacramento, so we all caravanned over the hill into the expansive Zuma Beach. As we drove over the hill I was unsure of my family, my dad, my stepmom, my sister in the other car - I always feel like an awkward sunflower growing out of cracked city cement when we're together. We're sort of spindley as a whole family. Untried. A car without wheels in someone's driveway.
We got the beach and the waves were enormous. As we got everything out of the car, my stepmom was in her blue bathing suit, and wait, she's here, and she's out of her uniform. And my dad has his shirt off, and everyone looks so handsome. And there's my sister, she's here. Wait, I have a family. Spending time out of our native habitat, this is going to be interesting. Things are feeling full.
My kids and I have been going to the beach one day a week this summer, meeting a friend up in Ventura. I feel the urge to become beach expert, to dictate where to put the towels, to tell everyone I am Beach savvy so they know. But instead I let go of leading. I park the towels when I look at my dad and he says "here?" I look fearfully at all the people, there's so many people, it's like we're at the movies, jammed on the sand and watching the new "Ocean" now in theaters. So it's not Ventura. It's all going to be different. It looks like I'm the spindley one.
So we start digging holes, apparently the kids all want holes of varying sizes, dug up and down the beach. A hole for resting. A hole for an ocean jacuzzi. A hole with an umbrella over it. There's food, and now the people around us look like a beach movie themselves, and instead of being annoying, it's kind of comforting.
The cousins are instantly in the water, and Lilly and Gramma Susie have already been creamed by a wave with Lilly falling over. Then of course we find out later that the rip tide is so dangerous that it's been on the news all day. But we don't know that, we're too busy PLAYING IN IT. Gramma Susie, not a woman too interested in taking her favorite clothes off in general, is out there IN the water. Then as I haul the baby to my hip, she's really in the water, getting tumbled. She's getting sucked to the side like in a water vortex and everyone's standing around, but she's in this water funnel, and I yell "Help her!" half-worriedly to the fat guy who is nearby her, but no one can hear me. Why is everyone standing still? Why is there always a fat guy standing nearby? Then the lifeguard is there and he's helping her out and I'm feeling this pain in my heart, thinking wow wait a minute, that looked like frailty. I never think of her as a gramma and then I thought oh no if the ocean can get her, even as bold and strong and she is, is she becoming the gramma, who can't get up? Will she get old, can I protect her? This wave of time hit me (I'm always being hit by something melancholy) and there was this joy of having my actual parents on an actual beach, actually frolicking, and then this feeling of powerlessness - this big ocean, and she's just a tiny little person who might need help. Fear hand in hand with love. I guess that's it, pretty much everyday life, if you let yourself feel it strongly.
Aside from the near death, there was my dad in his little blue shorts and his tan legs, looking like happy vacation dad, and my sister sampling food and talking about tramp stamp tattoos, and kites and the baby with the yellow curls who loves the ocean, running in the ocean, even with those clear blue green glass crushing waves.
When we were leaving, at the back of my car as my dad and I hefted everything in, he said, "Julie, you are amazing." My dad, the one who I always thought of as amazing, and he was admiring me. The feeling is so good it just floated through me like air. He handed me a cold water for the trip. He took care of me. He had packed all the food, led the way, bought us ice cream on the way home. Spent time with us all. It feels great to be led, taken care of, enjoyed. As Gramma Susie, wave survivor, says, it's what parents do. It feels great to see my people in their bathing suits at McDonald's eating a variety of bad food. Our family is so tiny, I almost didn't recognize it. I keep thinking we're supposed to be bigger to be meaningful.
Hmmm.
Once we're home with the cousin, I feel bad that I had dreaded his coming the night before. Because he is the son of my lost brother, I felt so angry that I had to be reminded of our family's saddest brother by having his son here. But then spending time with Aiden, all that is erased as stupid bullshit. He's a kid, a good kid, a huge, playful kid who is gentle with the baby. He and my kids swam in the pool, ate dinner in the pool, didn't get out until bedtime. Waterlogged, when I put him to bed he said "everything aches," with a smile.
On the way home from the beach I realized by being absent all these years, my brother has missed being a parent, and growing along with your child. If he came back now, he would have basically the same mental age as his son. He wouldn't be much help to his son, and that's what a parent is for. It's what parents . As Aiden is 11 years old, the space for my brother isn't really there anymore.
But maybe I don't know everything. It's a relief to follow and not lead.
As Emma went to bed tonight, she said she could still feel the waves moving her. Her in her orange bikini bottoms and long, lovely legs. Nathan hanging on every word Aiden says, trying to figure out how to be older. Still coming in to kiss me goodnight, because at night, he is still my baby.
Our family maybe not such cracked cement. Maybe more like a bunch of gangley sunflowers. Even the lost brother.