Member-only story
Reflections on Identity
A Mother on Vacation Without Her Children
Learning How to Be Independent of My Children
I watch from my lounge chair as a young girl enters the water, exploding into it. She is not tentative, as I always am, letting my feet acclimate to the cool wet sand, then edging forward so the waves cover just my toes, then ankles, then up to my knees. I wince with every lap of the water, even here in Barbados where the water is a translucent turquoise and just a tad chiller than lukewarm.
But not this girl. She is maybe seven, fine blonde hair tucked into a bubblegum-pink sunhat that is strapped beneath her chin, arms covered in a lavender polka-dotted swimshirt. Her parents have dressed her carefully and I feel an instant pang of guilt for how I have failed my kids in this department — my kids in tiny ruffled bikinis who went hatless, who I halfheartedly chased after with cans of spray-on sunscreen. They were not the pale tow-headed children whose cheeks turn pink instantaneously in the sun, my children — they bronzed, getting darker and coppery. I could be careless with their sun protection, unlike their friends whose sunscreen application had to be done with scientific precision lest I return them to their families aglow, unwarranted pride redolent in my words, “sorry, my kids never burn.”
But my kids are not here, just me and the man I am dating, parked beneath an umbrella and practically catatonic — reading, napping, people-watching. We have no one to chase after, no skin to fret over but our own, and so what do we do? We watch other people’s children, recalling how we did it when it was our turn, grateful to be off-duty but also remembering, always remembering.
I tell him how my husband took our kids into the water no matter how rough the waves were, too terrified of sharks after being traumatized by the movie Jaws to entertain the notion of other dangers like riptides. He tells me how he walked endlessly along the water’s edge with his kids, collecting shells and digging for crabs. We remember, with sad smiles, and keep watching other people’s children.
The girl runs into the water up to her waist. The waves crash before they reach her and she jumps up and down when the froth rolls toward her, her arms…
