It wasn’t Spring. The temperature fluctuated from one day to the next, teasing us with sunshine and warm weather, and the next day, temps plummeted and froze again. The cherry tree, azaleas, and buttercup blossoms turned brown and withered. One week I had the heat on in our house, and the next week, someone flipped the thermostat switch back to air conditioning.
It wasn’t a break for me either. I couldn’t take time off. I had no vacation time accrued, but I shelled out cash, offered my emergency credit cards, and Venmo’d friends’ parents our share of their trips to the beach — my son to the Gulf with his friend’s family and my daughter to the Atlantic with her friend’s family.
I didn’t make comments or offer lectures about alcohol, drugs, or sex to my teens and instead hid behind something my conservative parents might have inserted into a conversation with a wink or giggle: “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Their comments which conjured images of them drunk or having sex were gross and the stuff of nightmares.
I worried my daughter’s skimpy bikini showed too much, and my son’s swimsuit when wet showed his package. I couldn’t protect them from the world like I did when they were children, when we took Spring Break trips to 30A in the Gulf, Disney World, or a Florida island, holding hands, watching every step, and steering them away from anything I saw as dangerous.
That was when I was still wise and the center of their universe.
My own ghosts came quietly in fears, images, or dreams: sunburned skin from using cooking oil to tan that eventually turned to skin cancer and hard liquor gulped before carnivals along the strip, putt-putt golf, or a fun house. When I laid on the bathroom floor after vomiting, I pretended it was worth it and kept it to myself.
At work, I stayed busy while they were gone, hoped their friends’ parents would watch them, but knew they would never watch them like I would. At night, I found it difficult to sleep. A “Good night, I love you” text wasn’t lullaby enough for me, and when they arrived home, tracked in sand, and took showers, I rubbed lotion on their red shoulders and asked them separately in their bedrooms, “How was the trip?”
“Fine,” they said.
“What did you all do?”
“Nothing,” they said.
“So, I spent all that money on nothing?”
“Yeah.”
Niles Reddick is author of a novel, four short fiction collections, and two novellas. His work has appeared in over five hundred publications including The Saturday Evening Post, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bending Genres, Citron Review, Midway Journal, and Vestal Review. He is a ten-time Pushcart nominee, a three-time Best of the Net nominee, and a three-time Best Micro nominee. You can find him on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
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