You looked adorable. Then again you always looked adorable to me, even when you were angry -sometimes especially so. Not that you were an angry child, I mean you were sometimes, but -you get what I mean. You had your blue goggles pasted over your forehead, and comically large floaties were clinging to each of your arms like security guards. When you had decided that you wanted to swim, you handed one floatie to me and the other to Sylvie, and announced that the fastest person to blow them up would get to swim with you. Sylvie and I had looked at each other over your head, both of us trying to silently say she gets that from you, you know. It’s hard to blow up floaties when you’re laughing, and you know your mum was much more of a giggler than I am. When you screamed “DADDY’S WON!” I bequeathed you each of your precious floaties, sliding them up your arms while you sat on your camping chair like it was a throne of gold. Sylvie was still curled up with laughter beside you in the beach tent, not that you noticed; you were too busy delightfully burying your feet into the warm sand.
We only went into the shallow licks of the water anyway -your tummy, my knees. I didn’t even need to take my shirt off. Every now and then, you’d snap on your goggles with all the seriousness of a general and put your head under the water to see if any fish were around.
Most of the time you weren’t successful, but every now and then you’d urgently tap my foot and point at the glimmer of a tail swimming away. Whenever you came up for air, you’d have this face full of beaming pride, like you’d just witnessed a secret.
This was before you’d started your surflessons, before all those school swimming days, back when the sea was still something untapped, unknown. You were discovering the beach, learning that wet sand was good for throwing and dry sand played with the wind, and that all kinds of sand got everywhere. You were constantly wandering off when we were walking together, simply because curiosity had led you towards another pretty shell for your growing collection, or a seagull’s feather that you wanted to stick onto one of your drawings.
While you were underwater exploring, I looked around, checking periodically on your bobbing head. It was one of the first hot days of the summer, and we weren’t the only ones making the most of it. The beach was littered with neon coloured umbrellas, sandcastle buckets with shovels stuck in the sand, and towels like tilework lining the shoreline. Those kinds of days were filled with an enthusiastic energy to do nothing, such that the beach was trembling with excitement even as people mostly just lay around. Sometimes the heat, with all its bodies and eyes hidden behind shades, felt like a weight pinned down to my chest, so suffocating that I would have to dive into the cool embrace of the ocean just for a chance to breathe.
There was another parent nearby, a dad holding hands with his son as he jumped gleefully over the breaking waves. He kept looking over at me, and normally when that happens I avoid eye contact, bracing for whatever might come next. But he eventually waved. I met his gaze hesitantly, and recognised him as Tom, a friend way back from high school.
Tom said, “Hey Ali-“
“Al, I just go by Al these days,” I interrupted, “and hey! It’s nice to see you, it’s been a while hasn’t it?”
“Oh, right. AL Yeah, last time we saw each other I don’t think either of these guys were in the picture,” Tom gestured at you and the boy, and I laughed. You were still exploring away, oblivious. I crossed my arms over my chest, and uncrossed them again. It was such an old habit, hard to shake.
“So, uh, is she yours?” Tom asked. I didn’t really blame him for asking; we’ve never looked alike.
“Yeah, that’s Morrie, she’s my daughter,” I replied, “And who’s this little guy?”
“This is Joe. Turning three in a couple of weeks, I can barely believe it.” He messed up the thin blonde hair on Joe’s head.
“Yeah, time sure flies, doesn’t it.” I sounded flatter than I meant to. We shuffled around for a moment, before Joe tugged on his dad’s hand. He mumbled something, and Tom crouched down to hear what he was saying. Tom looked up at me and grimaced,
“Gotta go, this guy needs the toilet. It was nice to catch you, we should meet up again sometime, bring the whole gang back together!”
“Sure, that would be great!” I hoped my smile reached my eyes. Last I heard, the ‘whole gang’ hadn’t been back together since we all split off for uni. Tom and Joe dashed off, and somehow you had missed the entire thing. You popped up your head just long enough for a dramatically big breath before dunking down again into the water.
Alice. He was going to say Alice. When was the last time I’d heard that?
The sun was reaching its peak in the sky, and its harsh rays beamed right through me, as though I was a glass greenhouse. The next time your head bobbed up, I asked you if you wanted to practise floating on the water. When you squealed and jumped in return, I took that for a yes and promised to come right back after I got changed back at the tent. Spots of my shirt were already blushed dark from all our splashing, and it was the only one I had. When I jogged up to our beach tent, taking off my shirt and chucking it in the comer, Sylvie paused from her writing for a moment and caught my hand. I had turned back to the sea, looking out for you.
“How are you guys doing out there?” Sylvie asked
“Yeah, good, Morrie’s going to practise her floating now.” I said, playing nonchalant. I shifted my weight to my right leg. “It’s getting pretty hot.”
Sure is.” Sylvie looked at me inquisitively. “Do you want me to come in with you guys?”
“It’s okay, I’ve got it. You keep going with your writing.”
Sylvie looked unconvinced. I looked away.
“I don’t need a bodyguard to go swimming with my daughter,” I said quietly.
“I know you don’t need one. But you also don’t have to face it all alone, Al,” Sylvie replied gently. She squeezed my palm, and when she saw my expression, gave me a wink. A supportive wink, a go get em tiger kind of wink. I released a deep breath, squeezed her hand back with a smile, then ran back to you.
“Are you ready?” I asked you, scooping you up and out of the water. You laughed and yelled “Put me down!” and I dropped you carefully back onto your feet. Then I put my hands on my hips.
“So, can you tell me, which animal are we pretending to be today?”
“A starfish!” you said, and you spread your arms wide, waving them around.
“Like a starfish,” I agreed, copying your wiggling arms. “But Morrie, have you ever seen a starfish run super fast?”
“Fish don’t run, silly.” You splashed water on my face. You were lucky you had said that to me and not Sylvie; she would have launched into a whole discussion about how starfish technically aren’t fish, but marine invertebrates. She was probably the only person I knew that could have made that sound actually interesting to a four-year-old, but then again she was probably also the only person I knew who liked marine biology enough to be doing a PhD in sea slugs. I mean, come on. I used to call her Steve when we first started dating, after Steve Irwin. She hated it, but I only found out after we’d already been together for a year. Classic Sylvie.
“Okay, well, swim then. Have you ever seen a starfish swim, or move at all?” I asked you.
“Not really. The one at the akwe … akarey … aquarium was just stuck on a rock. Maybe they do it when we’re not looking?”
“Maybe they do! Well. Can you pretend to be a starfish, all laid out on a rock? You can’t move at all, not even a tiny bit. That’s what you have to do when you’re floating. You want to give it a try?”
You practised, right then, looking like a stoic statue in your cartoon rasher shirt.
“Good one, Morrie!” I told you, and you broke formation for an enthusiastic high five. Two teenage boys were facing our direction, laughing. I couldn’t tell if they were looking at us or not. It didn’t matter. I looked back at you.
“Do you want to try that on the water now?” I asked, “I’m still going to hold your back, don’t worry.” You nodded, but then you caught sight of a fish again and you immediately dunked your head under the water to chase it. You forgot to put your goggles on. You jumped back up again, spluttering and wailing, and I remember you kept periodically yelling “SALTY!” as we trudged up the beach back to Sylvie for a towel and water. You sipped on your straw furiously until, at last, you said your mouth tasted normal again. You had a break, making sandcastles with Sylvie until you felt like the sea could be your friend again, while I went for a dip.
Once I was about knee deep, I dived in and felt the shock of the cool water against my skin. I swam a little further out, just beyond the swell of people. There, treading water, I looked back on the beach. For thirty odd years I had been going to that beach, since I was not much older than you were at the time. But it had been a while; you know that it’s my favourite place but it’s also complicated, overlaid with countless memories from my childhood, adolescence, adult life, and now parenthood. I still remember so vividly being there when I was fifteen, constantly fidgeting with the edges of my bikini, having a vague sense of feeling extremely uncomfortable but with no words for why. There was this curdling feeling in my chest, something I would take painstaking measures to hide, because normal people don’t feel weird about going to the beach. And I was normal, or wanted to be. By this point, the curdling feeling inside was more or less gone, but I could now see it in peoples’ eyes when they looked at me. The confusion, the slight turn towards disgust.
But I was still allowed to like the beach. God, I’d missed it. I kicked up my legs and floated, closing my eyes so that the sun was just a warm yellow on my eyelids. The screeches of children and seagulls alike fell away, replaced by the sound of water. It felt nice to have the sea on my skin again. More than that; it felt like a return. To home. I let myself float just long enough for me to slightly lose the sensation of where my arms ended and the sea began, before slowly coming up again. I could see you running over from the tent, so I swam back to the shore.
We went back to practice.
“Ready?” I splayed my hand against your back. I remember feeling the tension ease out of my body as I ducked down to your level, the waves gently pulsing around my shoulders. The water was calm and nurturing that day; it would hold your body if you let it. You leaned back and stretched out as we had practised, but you kept wriggling, trying to kick aimlessly with your feet. I tried to tell you to relax and gently hold your legs, but you ended up just kicking me as well. After a few minutes, you stood back up again. I sighed, then tried to stifle it with a cough.
“I can’t do it,” you told me simply, eyes averted to your fidgeting hands.
“Not yet, but we can try later,” I reassured you, and I came over and ruffled your hair. It was slick with sea water, slightly stiff with salt. Sylvie had done it in braids, but they’d almost lost their shape now.
You shrugged, twisting your fingers around each other, before suddenly lighting up like an exclamation mark. A cheeky grin crept over your face, pulling out your dimples.
“Can I go Turtle in the deep part again?” you asked me.
You had switched on your pleading eyes, hands clasped under your chin. You knew I couldn’t say no to that face. Not that I would have, anyway. I smiled, and hoisted you up and out of the sea and onto my back while you squealed in delight. Your arms wrapped tightly around my neck, almost too tight, and we glided like one big turtle into the sea.
My scars were hurting a bit. They were mostly fine by then, but sometimes when they were pulled a certain way – exactly the way that your legs happened to be curled around the bottom of my chest, constantly moving – they flared up again, still feeling a bit tender. That was the first day I’d gone to the beach post-op from top surgery. It was also the first day I was out in public with you, without a shirt covering my scars. I had been avoiding it for a while. Sylvie and I had gone swimming at the local pools a month or so earlier and that had been a shitshow, right
from the ogling in the changing rooms to the final muttering comment from a passing instructor. I didn’t want to bring you into it. But then I realised that I loved swimming with you, and I missed it, and I’d be damned ifI let some random idiots stop me from having fun with you. I kept reminding myselfthat we were just a family going to the beach, and that I didn’t have to focus on anything else except the little ball ofenergy that was now clinging to my back.
The water was up to my chest now. You had loosened your legs a bit, just enough to let them float and give me a breather. The waves lapped over us rhythmically like heartbeats. There weren’t many people in this far, just the odd lone swimmer and a few teens tossing a ball around. I could feel myself relaxing as we went deeper, the sea covering more and more of me until I was barely more than a head sticking out of the water. I jumped lightly with one of the waves, and you let out a peal of laughter. We counted down before jumping each wave for a bit, saying 3,2,1 in unison before I jumped for the two of us. I turned us around to wave back at Sylvie. She was still scribbling away, which meant that she was probably about to add yet another detour to her thesis. She looked up though, after a minute, and waved back. You rested your cheek against my shoulder, hand fluttering in front of my face.
Sylvie thought I was being ridiculous, how nervous I had been about the top surgery. I fit had been about the procedure itself, the bullshit bureaucracy of qualifying for an appointment, or the awkward family silences at gatherings, that would have been one thing, she’d say. But I was prepared for all that stuff, and had been preparing myself for it for years. What I was worried about was you, the unintended third party to all of this. I had wanted to get the surgery over and done with before you were born, but the money I’d saved had ended up going towards IVF when it became evident that Sylvie was going to need more than just one cycle of injections. It felt like a ‘me’ problem, the kind of thing that a kid shouldn’t have to be even remotely aware of.
I don’t know, I think at the time I was so used to this outsider opinion that wanting to transition was some kind of weakness on my part; that I didn’t have enough self-love to just like the body that I was in. As if people didn’t take one look at me and immediately assign boy or girl depending entirely on how I looked that day, and treated me completely differently depending on which box I fit. People could get surprisingly agitated when they couldn’t figure out what gender I was, and yet this agitation was somehow my fault, like I was making their lives harder somehow by just being myself. Anyway, somewhere down the line, that awareness of people seeing me as weak translated into me worrying that you, too, might see me as weak. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be a steady father, reliable.
The waves had quietened to a murmur, the sun ducking behind the clouds scattered in the sky. The water was cast grey, the sparkling light dimming for a few moments. We were quiet, just walking gently in lazy circles. Silence with you was often only either when you were about to fall asleep, or you were thinking. I was trying to figure out which one we were heading towards, listening to the slowness of your movements. If you were sleepy we needed to head back to the shore. I was just about to turn around when you said,
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“What happens when we die?”
Of course. No easy questions today. You always had the exact same tone in your questions, whether you were asking why cheese was yellow and not purple, or why you had to write words the correct way, not just how you heard them. Every question felt equally important to you, such that you couldn’t understand why you could ask your preschool teacher why plants had leaves but not why there was snot in his nose.
“That’s a good question,” I said, and continued to walk slowly in circles. When it became clear that you were waiting for an actual answer, I turned towards the horizon.
I said, “There are a lot of people who think different things. Some people think they know exactly what happens when we die – like that we’ll go to a special place and be happy forever.”
“Like Aunty Sharon? She said I’ll go to heaven ifl eat my broccoli.”
“Yeah, like Aunty Sharon.” I declined to comment on Sylvie’s sister and her tendency to hand kids’ Christian pamphlets to you when we weren’t looking. She was starting young; you could barely even read. Apparently we were both beyond salvation.
“Some people think that we’ll be born again like a baby, or that this is it, that after this life there is nothing else. But no one really knows.”
“Everyone who knows is already dead!” You said gleefully, and I laughed. “Well, you are right about that. So it’s up to you what you want to think.” “Hmm.”
I couldn’t see your face, but I imagined your typical serious expression; brows furrowed like your mother, chewing your lip.
“I think my special place would be all chocolate. You can bite into anything and it would be chocolate!” You exclaimed, and you bit my shoulder. I laughed.
“Even me?”
“You and me. All chocolate. Mum too.”
I laughed again, a big laugh that I felt in my belly. The sun reappeared, glaring down on us, and I wondered when the last time was that we put on sunscreen.
We had decided we would tell you that I was having an important surgery to make me feel better, keep it simple. We tried to keep it casual, just talking about it over dinner one evening. Sylvie made your favourite at my request – mac and cheese – to have you in a good mood. We reassured you that I was going to be okay, just in bed for a little bit and to just be a bit careful when you hugged me. You took it all in while you played with the macaroni on your plate, said “Okay,” then asked if sharks were real. I wanted to laugh. Sylvie gave me an / told you so look, but she was smiling. It was just easy to forget that for all of my own complicated feelings on the matter, Dad was just Dad to you.
You were humming to yourself, flicking the water onto my arm. But your question lingered, and I felt myself searching for a better answer. It felt like I was turning a hand inward, blindly grasping for a stone on the seabed of my consciousness.
“Do you want to know what I think?” I asked you. “About what?”
“About death, or what happens after it.”
You leaned your head against me again, nestling your cheek against the crook of my neck.
“Okay.”
I looked at the sky.
“I think that we’re all like little raindrops,” I said, “See those big clouds up there?” I pointed up. “Raindrops are waiting in those clouds, waiting to become rainfall so that they can see the world. In a way, our lives all happen in the time it takes for us little drops to reach the ground.”
You were still flicking water on my arm. I reached up to gently hold your hand, while my other hand sifted through the water as I continued.
“I think the place we go to when we die is like the sea. Some ofus will go straight from the cloud to the sea-“
“There’s lots of things in the sea. There’s killer whales and coral and gross jellyfish-” “Yes, yes, coral and gross jellyfish. Anyway, some of us will go straight from the cloud to
the sea, and some ofus might take a good long time, going from a tree maybe, leafby leaf, going all the way into the soil, before eventually-“
“Can we wave at Mum again?”
“- finding our way back to the sea.” I finished under my breath. Why I kept going on I didn’t know. But it felt like my hands were just brushing against the stone, on the brink of understanding. I turned around slowly, and while you waved to Sylvie I said,
“CanI ask you a question?”
You nodded, your chin digging into my shoulder.
“When we’re swimming like we are now, do you feel lots oflittle drops ofwater, or one big thing?”
I plucked a chunk of seaweed from the water and threw it away. You used to hate the stuff.
“It’s all kind ofthe same, unlessI kick like this-” you started kicking violently, spraying
water everywhere.You giggled.
“Exactly, you’re right. That’s kind of what I think, I guess. When we die, we become part of this one big thing again, this collective consciousness. We’re born together, and we die together.”
You grabbed my elbow and waved my hand to and fro. Sylvie hadn’t looked up yet. I’d probably lost you there anyway. After a few moments, you said,
“We collect a conshunziss? What is that?”
I chuckled. “Well, what I think I mean is that no matter what happens, we’ll always end up together, okay? Even if- even if l’m not around anymore, I’ll be waiting for you.”
“But you’re not.” “Not what?”
“You’re not always waiting.” “What do you mean?”
You let out an exasperated sigh, like it was obvious what you were saying. “After preschool, sometimes, you’re not waiting.”
“Oh. Yeah, sometimes there’s traffic I guess,” I paused, “I’ll try to get there earlier, how about that? So you’re not waiting.”
“I don’t really mind, I get to play with Christie anyway. We get all the good toys when everyone is gone.”
“Okay, well, good, then? Let’s not worry about it. I love you, you silly little goose.” I poked your side and you squealed, “but that’s enough questions for now, I think.”
You shifted again, and this time I felt something hard against my back. “Ow! Morrie, stop elbowing me please!”
“What do you mean? I’m not- Oh! I forgot!” You wrestled around for a moment, and then your hand appeared in front of my eyes with a pebble. It was smooth and circular, of a dark grey colour with tiny flecks of white.
“I had it in my pocket. I wasn’t elbowing you. Isn’t it cool?”
I rubbed the stone between my fingers, letting it rest between my knuckles. “Very cool, Morrie, very cool,” I murmured, smiling.
A couple days after my surgery, when I was still bedridden, you came to our bedroom after dinner. Sylvie was prodding you gently as you came into the room unusually shy, with one of your drawings in your hands. You handed it to me, and Sylvie said that you had drawn this for me at preschool that day. There were three pale blobs. One was me, with arms and legs stuck out like needles from a pin cushion. I had a big smile on my face, a thin red line cleaved across the blob in a curve. The other two blobs were smaller and sitting on the comer of the page, both with frowny faces. Do you remember this? The Evil Boobs drawing was on our refrigerator for years, and I laughed so much that day I thought I was going to rip a stitch. You always had an uncanny sense of timing for gifts.
I smiled to myself, and handed you back your stone.
“Keep it!” you said, “it’s for you.” You know, I actually still have that stone; it’s the one that’s always on my desk. Like I said, good gifts. You crawled around so that your face was inches from mine. You took two fingers and stuck them in the comers of my mouth, drawing my face into a Joker-like smile.
“Happy?” you asked me, and I laughed through my teeth. You giggled, and took out your fingers and drew your own mouth into a smile.
“Happy,” I replied, “but don’t stick your fingers in my mouth Morrie, that’s a bit gross.” You ignored me, eyes on a passing seagull in the sky.
“I’m serious!” I said, “next time, I might bite them off by accident, so don’t say I didn’t wam you.”
You gasped, “You wouldn’t!”
“Especially if I’m hungry, that’s why I’m warning you…” I tickled you under your chin.
I looked up, back at our beach tent. Sylvie had actually stopped moving, for once. She was done writing, stretched out in the sun on a towel. She’d probably start messing around with lunch things in a moment, even though we’d pre-made everything in the morning. My two girls, both with more energy than they knew what to do with.
She set up and caught sight of us, and we waved again. Sylvie waved back with what seemed like a faint smile on her face. Suddenly, I felt impossibly distant from her. Why did I say no to her joining us? The space between the two of us and her felt like it stretched for miles; us with our bare skin glistening from the sea and the sun while she sat watching, hidden behind her sunglasses and straw beach hat. Of course, this was years before. None of us knew what was going to happen, but now looking back, I don’t know. Sometimes Sylvie would be in a different world, like a ghost even when she was alive. It made me uneasy. There were days or moments where she seemed almost translucent, like a patch of light streaming through the window that suddenly disappeared. And you know that it’s just a cloud or something probably, but for a brief moment you wonder if it was ever there to begin with. Suppressing a shudder, I waved slowly, and started walking us towards the shore.
As we returned to the shallow part of the beach, I asked you if you wanted to try to starfish again. You seemed tired, or quiet, but you said yes. Maybe it was all the swimming or the exhaustion of the sun, but you were more still this time, so still that I could almost have moved my hand away. I didn’t though. I couldn’t let go, not yet. Suddenly your body tensed, and you twisted out of my hand and sprung towards the sand. Over your shoulder, you yelled,
“Race you back to mum!”
And I wondered who would reach land first, and who would be left in the sea. I gave you a head start.
