Cloud Reflections in the Ocean

It was a typical New England March. Somehow, the persistent damp, cloudy weather was worse than the snowy months that had just gone by. This odd transition period happened every year and yet people still complained about it like it was new, as if it were a ritual that brought on spring. The lack of leaves, a welcome sight in the dimmer fall, just looked tired and stark in the harsher spring light. The brown and grey landscape was dotted with vibrant green grass trying to get a head start on the weeds and furious growth that was just around the corner.

Today was one of the rare, dry days that, although it was only in the low 60’s, it may as well have been in the 80’s. Teenagers walked the sidewalks dressed in shorts and skimpy shirts just to prove the point. Piper had been waiting for just such a day, so much in fact she had packed her bag back in February to grab and run for the beach as soon as she possibly could. Being prepared for it had only served to slow time down, the last few weeks after she had done so felt like running on a hamster wheel - two jobs kept her working six days a week. She ran one last check on her bag, grabbed a water bottle, and moved towards the door.

As she got to the bottom of the stairs, she got a ping on her phone. Like all possessed of a cell phone, she could not resist checking it immediately. And like most cell phone users, she immediately wished she hadn't.

“Need you to come into work. Chelsea called out.”

Piper's heart sank- weeks of waiting after the snow melted only to, on the first beautiful day, be asked to go into work. She immediately regretted having been so excited about the weather. All day yesterday she had been checking, and subsequently chirping, about how beautiful it was going to be. “Ug, all I've been doing is working, I could really use a break!” she had said to the front desk person. “What are you doing tomorrow?” she had asked the receiver only so that the return question would come back as “well what about you?”, only so she could respond “oh me? I’m going to the beach!”

No doubt posting the picture of her beach bag last night was the cause of her undoing. The worst part of course was that everyone she had asked had very reasonable, important things to do. One had scheduled a dentist appointment, the other a parent teacher conference, one was traveling to see their sick relative. Others were already working. She was the only one who not only had a plan to do something fun, had planned something that was easily able to be done any other nice day.

The best part was, of course, she was not going swimming. Even in the summer the water was too cold for her. She was not even necessarily going to sunbathe, although there were few pleasures more enjoyable than hot sand on a warm spring day. The best part of the forecast had been that the waves were going to be next to nothing. Not that the waves in New England were ever massive, save for the storm here and there, but calm was super rare. Seeing the clouds reflected in the nearly smooth surface of the ocean was one of Piper’s favorite sights.

After the very public broadcasting of her excitement, the jig was most assuredly up. Thinking about the store, Piper knew she was the only one available to cover, and she knew her boss called because they knew too. Being unable to blame her boss for correctly assuming she could (and would) change her schedule, a childish and angry voice inside her reasoned Chelsea had decided to call out when it was clear that it was going to be a gorgeous day. One had only to open the window and smell the fresh air. It was the astronomically perfect lining up of time and weather for Piper, and Chelsea had the audacity to call out for her own likely selfish reason.

As vocal as Piper was about going to the beach for fun, Chelsea was vocal about her ailments. She always had a migraine, never a headache, despite not ever suffering the more obvious signs like light sensitivity or nausea. Bills were always coming due or were overdue. Rent was always late and landlord insistent, and of course it was always the landlord being unreasonable and unwilling to work with her that month (despite the track records of months that she was late). “So much school debt!” she would complain. If only someone would pay it off for her. “How privileged people were to be able to get a job and pay off their school loans!” Chelsea had posted once.

Piper always wondered whether Chelsea ever put together that the point of college was to make the money to pay off the investment. Piper hadn't been able to get a job in her field, and so she turned to retail to buy time until she could. As more time went by, she picked up a second job, still hopeful the day might come, but certainly beginning to wonder if the choice she had made on her major was the right one. None the less, she'd been putting away a little extra into the loan each time, and so hearing that school debt might get paid off made her feel as if her extra payments had been wasted. It was an opinion she didn't dare share with anyone. Enough turmoil in her own family over issues like that had taught her keeping the opinion to herself was the best course of action.

She wanted to beat her head against the wall, wishing she had shown the same discretion with her plans. Piper knew she was going to go in, there was simply no question. To say, “no”, would be telling her boss that she did not care, and it just was not something she could sit with. The admission only made her more frustrated. She made an excuse to her boss that she was out but that she would be there in about an hour or two. The she headed to the beach for what would be a very short trip just to breath in the air a bit and calm her nerves. She felt she deserved a little time if she could not have the whole day. How would her boss know anyway?

It was only a ten-minute drive from her apartment. Her beat-up car screeched every time she stopped because the breaks needed repair. She had been so busy that bringing the car in to have the work done had just slipped her mind. On the plus side, for the first time in a long time she actually had the money to fix it. Chelsea’s multiple call outs had been very profitable for Piper, putting her in a place where she was nearly working 40 hours a week and putting more money aside not just for the car but for her own school loans.

When she got to the beach, it was exactly as she had expected. There were a few people walking the coast, but very sparse and far apart. She did not even set out the towel. Giant, puffy white cumulous clouds softly floated by, made taller by all the moisture evaporating as a result of the warmer weather. As if to pour salt in the wound, the sea was exceptionally calm, creating soft, almost Monet style reflections of the clouds in the water. She wanted to feel the peace of the moment but could not. Knowing that her time there was limited, and that the day was going to be as nice as she had been hoping, only made her irritation worse.

Five minutes was all she could stand. She felt silly for having even driven. She knew later as she talked to her mother it would be “why didn’t you just say you were sick, or even just say no? Who cares what they think?” She simply could not erase the feeling that she knew exactly what they would think, any more than she could erase the feeling of irritation. As quickly as she had sat down, she got up, feeling the pressure of work calling her. She stormed back to her car and slammed the door, bitter and angry.

That was 10 years ago. Piper was sitting in what she approximated was the exact same spot on that frustrating day. Her husband sat beside her munching on chips he had smuggled into the car at the gas stop on the way, a beach day ritual. Their son was playing out in the sand, testing how high he could fling it without dad or mom telling him to stop. Each exploratory toss was followed by a pause and cautious stare, the lack of reaction encouraging more exploration. The weather of this day was set up like that day, right down to the Monet like reflection of the clouds on the calm ocean waters.

Back then, after she had gone to work to fill out the shift, she found out from fellow employees that Chelsea had had a death in the family. She felt a bit guilty for feeling so angry, but had she admitted the truth to herself she was still put out. Management ultimately fired Chelsea for reliability issues; excessive call outs as they had put it. She did see Chelsea one more time, fuming about how she had been fired unfairly, slightly red in the face from tears despite it being days later. “Who fires someone for calling out for a death in the family?” she sobbed to co-workers she thought of as friends. “How could you not make that exception?” Piper remembered she didn’t have much to say during that visit.

But the firing had not made Piper feel better, oddly enough. Chelsea’s life had been a mess, and not having a job certainly hadn’t made it any better. When the anger eventually faded, weeks later, Piper had hoped that Chelsea would eventually figure out her life and find a way to stand on her feet. But now that time had moved on, Piper could not reason out why that day kept sticking out in her mind. It had become one of those memory flashes that just stuck around and refused to dim into obscurity. She watched the reflections of the clouds float along, thinking about how many days of her youth she had wasted covering shifts and picking up hours, and that day seemed to symbolize all of them. Back then it felt like all that was never going to end, as if time had been stuck. Eventually that feeling was proved wrong – she did not even have the same job now let alone hectic schedule.

It was not until her husband barked at their son who had pushed the sand limit a bit too far that she felt her mind come back to the present moment. How silly she felt for taking that day so seriously. The clouds puffed along on the surface of the water, slow and steady, but always moving forward.