Beach day
It's a gloomy yet unseasonably warm day at the beach. Our little family of four, all sniffling nonstop after yet another wave of preschool germs, arrives in a groggy state. Morro Rock is capped off by a dense mist.
My husband digs a long, deep trench with our toddler in front of our blanket. I peel oranges for the baby, whose only interest is food. In our snack tote is an opened bag of bombas, that cult Israeli peanut snack that all knowledgable moms adore. Baby bargains with me to have access to the bag. I feed him, but he wants the bag. I don't cave in. I don't want him to run around with it, eventually upending it all into the sand. Two weekends ago we spent several days dealing with silty diarrhea poops after a particularly snack-heavy beach excursion.
Surfers line our view of the horizon. I text my surfer friend. She doesn't respond; she is probably surfing.
Two middle aged men walk by our blanket. One is carrying a pink kids' hoodie, the other trots after a boy of about 10.
The bald one says to the other, "It's 'Love Story', or 'Love Song', something like that."
"What, like a 6th grade book?"
"I know, I know. Anyway."
This snippet of conversation makes zero sense to me, but I think of the teenage love story I have been trying to write, and I shudder to think of what it must seem like to other people.
My husband disappears with the baby, and the toddler and I continue to dig. I deepen the trench, clear away the loose sand. I begin, absentmindedly, to carve out an oval in the center, scraping away as I go. I think about landslides and escarpments that I measured and photographed in college. The oval starts to appear vaguely vaginal. I think about reading In the Cut while postpartum, how it made me twitch. I think about how I still haven't managed to write down my birth story, the first or the second.
I stand up, dizzy from dehydration. I look at our work. Suddenly, I see in the sand the shape of my linea alba: a long thin line running vertically, wrenched open in the center by a gaping ellipse.
My husband is back on the blanket, attempting to meditate. He gives up and digs into the bombas.
"Are you thinking of writing about digging holes?" he asks. His sick, nasally voice is a dead ringer for George Clooney's.
"Yeah. This hole reminds me of my diastasis."
"Oh. Digging holes right now just makes me think of the government, and my own career."
A seagull squawks shrilly, baring at us its diamond throat.
"I know what he wants," Mr. George Clooney says. "He's saying 'Bombas! I want bombas! I'm gonna eat your bombas!'"
Toddler chimes in: "I'm gonna eat you for dinner! I'm gonna cut you up like a chicken and put your beak in my mouth!"
Baby hobbles away in the sand, chasing after the bird.
The sun comes out. My husband stands up after repeating the battle over the bombas bag with the baby. He blows his nose into a handkerchief.
"Pudding!" he declares, showing me his nasal ejaculate. It is thick and slimy and glistening in the sun, green like oxidized kale, an evicted snail melting in acid.
I dry-heave and turn away in disgust. I make my way to the water. Neither of the kids want to dip their toes in with me. I think about the last time I touched the ocean, alone. The memory doesn't come. Instead I think about a time when, on a tour of Huntington Beach with visiting family, my parents didn't let me go to the water, for fear of cold. It was June in Los Angeles. Go figure.
Now we come to the beach at least twice a month, and I almost never bother with the ocean anymore.
When I return to our blanket, my toddler runs up to me, shouting, "The birds have taken our snacks!"
Indeed, that very bird who had been squawking at us had managed to seize the bag of bombas, left unattended on the blanket. It was a ways away now. I cursed and turned to chase after him, determined to get back at least the plastic bag.
"It's no use, baobei. That little guy's fast, and aggressively scary. Baby got freaked out when he came to snatch the food."
I'm too tired to chase anyway. We head home, exhausted and whiny, pores clogged with sand. I should've just given the bag of bombas to the baby after all.