I’ve done many things in my life that I regret, including some that I am ashamed of and would never write about in these pages.
Yet when I am wide awake at night wishing to find a clear space in which to dream of exhaustion, my mind always takes me back to a day in Santa Cruz, California, many years ago.
Adrian and I are house-sitting for a university family in a small bungalow with a large vegetable garden. We are there for a month in order to be near his two sons and their families, but not so near we are sleeping in their houses. A month is a long time.
Adrian and I both love Santa Cruz—who wouldn’t—so everyone wants to come stay with us while we’re there. The two sons come with their children. The children stay without their parents. Friends come from Iowa. One of my nieces in San Diego brings her family.
It’s a busy household, but exactly what we planned. A highlight is picking fresh greens from the garden for salads when I cook.
My sister Mary lives an hour north of Santa Cruz. She comes down one Sunday with her teenage daughter, Renee, to spend the day. Also staying with us that weekend are my niece’s family and one granddaughter. We have a house full.
But Adrian needs to meet with other family in Palo Alto that morning to deal with a crisis, and I join him. My niece offers to keep an eye on the granddaughter, and I figure Mary will enjoy seeing my niece, who is also her niece and Renee’s cousin, and everyone will be happy until we get back.
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As Adrian and I pull into the driveway, Mary, Renee and my niece’s husband are leaving to go to the beach. “Why don’t you come with us?” Mary asks.
Mary has always loved the beach and never passes up a chance to spend the day at one. When she was sixteen, our sister Laura seventeen, and I twenty-one, our father lent us his Volkswagen beetle—the only family car—so we could drive from our home in New Jersey to Canada for a vacation. Mary did not have her license yet, and Laura could not read a map, but we muddled our way to Ontario.
One day when Laura and I wanted to see a museum, Mary insisted on going to the beach on a lake. We dropped her off in her bathing suit with a towel around noon and said we’d pick her up at 3. But we got lost and delayed and by the time we got back for her, it was cold. She was freezing and wondering what she’d do if we didn’t return.
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As I lie awake at night thinking about that day in Santa Cruz, I say to myself, “Why didn’t I go to the beach with them?”
I’m not good at spur-of-the-moment decisions. Ask me to do anything on the spur of the moment, and I’ll probably say “no.” It’s just too scary to agree to something I haven’t had a chance to study first.
As I’m lying awake, I consider the fact that our young granddaughter was in the house that day and I felt responsible for her. I don’t know why she turned down the beach, or if that option was offered, but I had already left her alone for several hours with family she didn’t know very well.
I keep trying to find the rational reasons that explain my behavior, and then to go back and fix things, to relive it another way.
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When Mary and Renee finally came back from the beach, we were all in the living room together when I said, “I’ve got to go cook dinner now,” and left them again. I didn’t even invite them to join me in the kitchen.
I don’t like people to help me in the kitchen unless it’s my daughter, who knows what to do without my asking her. So if Mary and Renee had offered to help, I’m sure I turned them down. That part I can’t remember.
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Later Mary told me that Renee had said to her on the way home that day in Santa Cruz, “Doesn’t Aunt Lynney like us any more?”
And that is the line I think of in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep.
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I’ve seen Mary many times since that day, but not Renee, who grew up and went off to college. Years later I went to Renee’s wedding in Berkeley, but she wasn’t the same girl she had been in Santa Cruz.
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I am still trying to figure out what happened that Sunday. What I remember is thinking that there would be plenty of opportunities to see them again since we were going to be there for a whole month. But there weren’t.
I know I would give up a lot to be able to have that day back now to be with Mary and Renee.
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I am always living in the past or the future, so how can I be with anyone right now?
How rich I would be if I could.
Is there time for me to learn?
