by Aimee Taylor
“What does H-O-A-X spell?” comes a voice from the backseat. We are driving past the art gallery on the way to the beach. A few dozen protestors – some with masks on, ironically – hold signs that say “COVID is a hoax,” “Give us our freedom back,” and “the government is controlling us.” I explain as best I can.
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“But you said protesting is important.”
“Not when they’re idiots who don’t believe in science,” I reply.
She’s content with this.
We arrive at the beach under dark black clouds. She’s in tights with pants on top and I am in a winter coat. We make sandcastles, which end up being a dismal failure, a sneaky crow unzips our backpack and steals all of our snacks, and I want to give up and go home, but Sher needs the time without us, for once.
But then a flash of sun between two dark clouds.
“Did you bring my bathing suit?”
“Yes, but it’ll be freezing.”
She looks down the beach. A few kids are jumping at the shoreline in welly boots in wool sweaters.
“I’m a bit embarrassed, because I’m the only one to go swimming, but I’m also kind of proud of that, too.”
And with that, she bounds into the Pacific, looking back when the shock of cold hits, her smile as big as the sea. An old lady points and then scans the beach for a parent, mouth open with shock. I smile and she shakes her head at me. Alexa is neck-deep and the happiest she’s been in days. Me, too.
With a blanket wrapped around her for her newly-desired body privacy, I help her damp, sandy feet into her knickers and then the toes of her tights.
She’s freezing and hungry and wants to go home, but indulges me in a walk around the pond, where we see days-old ducklings and the teenaged ones we saw as brand new a month ago. Two turtles visit on a log and we count 16 fat pigeons sitting Hitchcocky in a willow tree. New life. Our life. Still happening, even when the world seems it could implode any minute.
On the way home, her covered in my winter coat, I choose a different route. This time, we run into a road closure, blocked by a Black Lives Matter protest, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to explain how different this one is. We chat, as we have been about Black lives lately, about how we and the police and the government need to make changes.
A passionate voice from the back seat gives me so much hope that we’re making progress: “We have to use our voices to tell them not to hurt Black people, because we’re white so they’ll listen to us, which is RIDICULOUS by the way.”
Yes, child. So much ridiculousness.
I tuck her in that night. I can’t lie down on my left side due to an infection from my surgery, so I lie next to her awkwardly, shifting in pain.
“I wish you were the same old you,” she whispers, with tears in her eyes.
“I know, lovey. Me, too.”
“You’re going to get better,” she says, wrapping her skinny arms around me.
“I hope so,” I reply.
We have to hope.
Aimee Taylor is a past retreat participant and co-facilitator of Callanish’s Younger Adult Circle. She is a writer, researcher, musician, mother and more.