A Memory at the Beach

I’ve often heard my friend’s tales of their first memories.  It is not an uncommon past time: while most of the audience’s eyes glaze over as each asinine story is told, the next still cannot wait to reveal the very first inklings of a memory that sit hazily in the periphery of their minds. The accounts are likely not accurate, with the colors skewed, and the moments fleeting.  There is something mysterious, however, in recalling that first event, whether exciting, tragic, or mundane, because it marks the beginning of an endless list of memories that shape who we are. 

It is thus poignant that my small mind chose to remember a certain event before or after all other occurrences in my childhood.  It is not unfortunate, however, because I look at it in a more sterile context; my life has been largely molded by my relationship with my mother.  It is thus fitting that my life experiences begin with her.
        

I remember, as clearly as I can manage the running bath in the hotel room.  The bright lights of the vanity bulbs beamed fully within the room, emanating eerie shadows into the unlit bedroom.  The mirrors were fogged up completely, save the one closest to the partly opened door.  As I splashed mindlessly in the tub, my eyes focused on the reflection of the strip of light that faintly cast itself across the floor of the hotel room, over the still-made bed, and up to the crumpled figure of my mother.
        

Her still body looked dark, and it moved intermittently with a violent sigh, and then returned to motionlessness.  Despite the pillow that covered her face, her sobs were not muffled.  I continued to play in the tub, sending cascades of water up the side of the tiled wall.  For whatever reason, I was not uneasy by the scene laid plainly within the other room.  Even as my mother, with bloodshot eyes and rings of smeared makeup, came into the room to wrap a towel around me, I felt happy.  We were at the beach, and it had been promised that tomorrow we would scour the shores for sand dollars.  That was enough to keep me occupied within my own thoughts.
        

The first telephone call sang through the hotel room like an alarm.  I jumped, causing my mother’s shaky brush strokes to snag in my hair.  She moved, as if under a spell, towards the phone, leaving the brush hanging precariously in the knot of my tresses.  Her voice ascended quickly, and she was soon screaming into the receiver.  In one minute, the conversation was over, and I felt pain sear through my scalp as the brush ripped through the lump in my hair.  Suddenly, she stopped, bent over her knees, and began crying loudly.  I sat there, with my half brushed head, unsure of how to react, wondering who had called.  Because her weeping seemed unfaltering, I turned my small body toward her and leaned against her side.  She hiccupped for a moment, extended her arm out, and pulled me softly into her.  There we laid for what seemed like hours, her in agony, and I content in her warm bosom.
        

The second phone call seemed dull and far off.  My eyes slowly opened as I felt myself being lifted off my mother’s lap and onto the bed.  I rubbed my eyes briefly, and rolled over to return to sleep, until I felt my mother shaking my arm.
        

“Ellie,” she murmured.  “Ellie, it’s your daddy.”
        I sat up instantly in excitement that he had called to talk to me.  My mind faintly questioned how he had known where we were, but as I clutched the receiver, the question disappeared.
        “Hi Daddy!” I sleepily chirped.
        “Hi, Little Friend,” his voice sounding coarse.  “How are you?  Are you ok?”
The urgency in his voice did not register with me.  “Yup, we are going to the beach to see whales and find shells and sand dollars!”
        “You’re at the beach?”
        “Yup,” I responded, suddenly confused about why he didn’t know where we were.
        “Are you sure you are ok?” He asked again, his voice catching.
        I furrowed my brows, and glanced at my mother who stood in the window of the hotel, smoking a cigarette as she looked out into the dimly lit parking lot.
        “What’s wrong, Daddy?” I whispered. He suddenly began to cry, but he covered the receiver quickly, so that I could only faintly hear him weeping in the background.  My heart began to pound fast within my chest, as I continued to stare at my mother’s silhouette.  “Daddy, why are you crying?” 

Overhearing this, my mother whipped around from the window, came over to the bed, and snatched the telephone from my hands.  The conversation was over, and so was the memory.
        

The spotty details of this recollection were later filled in for me, but by whom, I am not sure.  Such facts were seared as fully into my memory as the event itself; yet, logic tells me that I was not privy to all information until later.  The first phone call had been placed by my step-father.  While the altercation between him and my mother was one that I understood much later in life, his phone call was aimed at urging my mother to bring me home.  After hanging up with her, a second phone call was placed to my father that disclosed our whereabouts.  While my mother felt she was simply running from her problems, and perhaps her marriage, my father saw it differently.  She was carrying precious cargo, and he was a hair’s breath away from calling the police and reporting a kidnapping.