These Summer Moments

Raymond held his daughter’s hand as she pulled him toward the water.

“Come on, daddy! Come on!” she yelled, running as fast as her short, squishy legs would carry her.

“I’m coming, Sylvie, I’m coming,” he sing-songed behind her.

He tried to stay calm when Sylvie let go of his hand. When she ran ahead of him. When she dipped her toes in the water and didn’t seem fazed in the slightest that her dad wasn’t standing next to her.

“She’s ok.”

Raymond turned to see his dad, Larry, staring at Sylvie with a big smile.

“She reminds me of you, you know,” Larry said, still looking at Sylvie.

“Does she?” Raymond asked, looking at his father.

Larry nodded, squinting his eyes against the sun. “You loved the water,” he said, “You remember that last summer we were in Chicago?”

Raymond nodded.

“Remember the day we spent by the lake?” Larry continued, “Remember? You kept running into the water and your mother was so upset because you refused to put on sunscreen.”

Raymond nodded again but said nothing.

“Our last Chicago summer,” Larry said quietly still staring out at the water.

Raymond watched his father’s smile falter, his eyes glaze over and knew that Larry’s mind was traveling back in time.

Back to a time where everyone was young, where there were no issues between father and son, where the air was so hot you could taste it, and the coolness of the lake made everything so much better.

Raymond could almost remember the feel of the sand beneath his feet.

He could hear his mother, Maggie, screaming behind him, “You need more sunscreen, Raymond!”

He could feel his dad’s arms around him, carrying him into the lake.

The safety he felt. The excitement. The innocent certainty that they’d remain like this forever.

Maggie had made tuna sandwiches and potato salad, and they had played kick ball throughout the day.

Raymond remembered his parents holding hands as they walked into the lake. How they had splashed water on each other like children. As if being there with their own child made them feel like kids again.

He remembered how he didn’t understand why his father was so sad when they left. Why he wanted to stay longer even though Raymond and his mother were tired.

He remembered overhearing the whispers coming from his parents' bedroom when they got home,

“It’ll be fine,” Maggie had said, “It’ll be fine, Larry. My brother promised you a great job out there. You’ll see.”

“I know,” Larry said, “But this is my home.”

“Let’s just try,” Maggie said, “Let’s just try and see.”

“Do you remember the first summer we spent here?” Raymond asked.

Larry was quiet for a while and then said,

“I do.”

That day in Santa Monica was vastly different than the day by the lake in Chicago.

Larry had been short tempered, complaining about the trash and the crowds and the screaming children all around them. 

Raymond had tried to take his father’s hand, but Larry had swatted him away saying, “Go play, Raymond. Just go play.”

Then there was that one summer evening, years later when Raymond was 18.

If they were both honest with each other, they would have admitted that things were already different before that night.

They didn’t really speak to one another aside from the basics. How are you, how was your day, are you getting good grades.

The tension was already there, the resentment from both men of not feeling understood or appreciated or loved.

Raymond had been out with his friends, drinking and smoking on the beach. Holding a girl in his arms, whose face he wouldn’t remember.

He had stumbled home in the early hours of the morning. The only hours of the day when it was cool, when the heat didn’t overwhelm.

He assumed that his parents were asleep, that they didn’t even know he was gone.

But when he climbed in through the window he had snuck out of hours before, his father was sitting on his bed.

Waiting.

“Dad,” Raymond had said, “What are-

“You’re a disgrace,” Larry interrupted, “You have no pride in yourself or your family. If this is the nonsense you want to do, then find your own place to live. I will not stand for it.”

Before Raymond could reply, Larry left the room.

Raymond stood with a feeling of numbness he didn’t quite expect. No anger. No sadness.

Suddenly sober, he had packed a bag and left, filling the rest of his summer days with sleeping on the couches of friends and girlfriends and sometimes under the stars on the beach of Santa Monica.

His mother, Maggie, met him one day at a café, pleading with him to make peace.

“I have nothing to say to him,” Raymond had said.

“If you knew,” Maggie had said, “If you knew how hard everything has been for him, you would understand.”

Raymond had listened while his mother told him how Larry had never wanted to come to LA. How deeply he missed his hometown of Chicago. How everything that had been promised to him had been taken away.

And Raymond had known all of that by then. He knew of his father’s regrets and feelings of failure.

He had witnessed his father’s bouts of depression.

“I’m not his punching bag,” Raymond had said and watched his mother close her eyes and rub her temples, as if she could rub away the pain of always being in the middle.

There was the summer ten years later. When, at this point, the only word his father had said to him in ten years was a curt congratulations on his wedding day. When all of their messages to each other were sent through Maggie.

When Raymond’s phone rang one summer day, he was shocked to hear his father’s voice.

“I want to see you,” Larry had said, his voice raspy and thin and barely there.

“Where are you?” Raymond had asked, “Where’s mom?”

“She’s not here,” Larry replied, “I put myself here.”

Raymond discovered that Larry had checked himself into a mental health clinic in West LA.

When Raymond arrived, he didn’t recognize the man who greeted him.

Larry had lost tons of weight. His face had sagged and aged way beyond his years. He was stooped over, as if he had already given up on life.

Raymond got permission from the nurse to take Larry to lunch.

They went to Canters and ate in silence, neither knowing how to start a conversation.

Afterward, they walked down Fairfax, and Raymond watched as his dad walked into a bookstore owned by a man his father had come to know.

“Good afternoon Mr. Cohen,” the owner had said, “When am I going to see you at temple?”

Larry had smiled and shook his head, “Not for me.”

The owner had laughed, shook both their hands and left them to browse.

Larry walked slowly through the aisles, scanning the titles, touching the spines.

“You loved to read,” Larry said, “You were always reading. Always questioning…I’m sorry I didn’t have the patience for all your questions.”

Raymond didn’t answer because he didn’t know what to say. So, he just put his hand on his dad’s shoulder. And to his surprise, his father kissed his hand and held it. And they stayed like that for a while.

There was the summer when Maggie passed away.

When Raymond and Larry held her in their arms as she took her last breath.

And though peace had been made a long time ago, Raymond felt a heavy weight in his chest at having to now deal with his father alone.

 A summer later, Sylvie was born and everything changed again.

Larry found a new spring to his step.

He came over to Raymond’s house every weekend with gifts and food and books.

“She should learn Hebrew,” Larry said holding a board book with the Hebrew alphabet in his hand.

Raymond had laughed in response, “You don’t even know Hebrew.”

“I know enough,” Larry had said, bending down so he could read the alphabet to baby Sylvie.

That summer there were barbecues in the back yard. Picnics at Griffith Park. Conversations on the porch where they’d smoke cigars and share secrets and dreams, as if trying to make up for lost time.

And then there was this moment and this summer.

Where they stood watching now three-year-old Sylvie splash in the water.

Larry took Raymond’s hand unexpectedly and said, “I’m so proud of you, Raymond. I really am.”

Raymond’s eyes immediately watered, and he looked away from his father. He looked toward the sun so he could blame it on the brightness of the day.

He watched as Larry approached Sylvie and splashed in the water with her, carried her like he had done with Raymond all those summers ago.

Raymond walked on the sand, his father and daughter’s laughter music behind him, and he was overwhelmed with a feeling he couldn’t quite describe as he watched the waves wash away his footprints over and over and over again.