Tuesday, September
20th 2016
Destin, FL
It’s 9am and I am waking up with sand
in my bed. Actually, there is sand everywhere; it brings me great nostalgia
from childhood vacations in this place. It takes me about 30 minutes to get
ready and wander into the common area where my Dad is starting to cook and my Grandmother is watching Fox News.
Dad has acquired another box of
Starbucks coffee and I love him for it. My Grandmother and I relocate outside
while our breakfasts are made to order. We spend most of the morning lounging on the balcony before my Dad announces that it’s too hot and we move the party inside.
Around noon we all gather in the
kitchen for the official birthday celebration. Dad has brought us all birthday
hats, whistles, paper plates and napkins from home and special ordered an ice
cream cake. I find all of this preparation adorable. After a few selfies and a
(pretty bad) rendition of Happy Birthday we dig into the cake.
For the rest of the afternoon we all
sit in the air conditioned living room intermittently watching Fox News and
gazing at the ocean. Dad still seems mad about Grandmother calling
him am idiot. He is picking on both me and her out of
both boredom and spite. I can tell that my Grandmother does not have the energy
to go back down to the beach and I can’t figure out a way to stop this dynamic.
I take this time to zone out and contemplate how I will never understand the complexities of a relationship
between an only child and his single mother. Eventually, I decide that my best course of
action to ignore everyone.
Around 5pm the conversation turns to
our birthday dinner plan. We eventually decide that Mexican food
would be fun and we all gather into to the truck to go out to eat.
On the way to the restaurant we
realize that my Grandmother forgot her cane at the condo. My Dad insists on immediately
buying a new one (though he is simultaneously grumpy that he has spent too much
money on this trip). I can take a hint offer to pay for the cane. Dad accepts.
Finally, we land at Don Pedro’s. We
order a round of blue margaritas and I immediately know that this will be very
bad or very awesome. There is some strange initial conversation about whether
or not it’s appropriate for a man to have a trophy wife. I know it sounds weird
but I find this conversation fascinating and my Grandmother to be delightfully
feminist. Soon we are on round 2 of blue margaritas. I am definitely drunk. We
stumble through more conversation about the role of women in society and are
way too full of chips and salsa by the time our food arrives. We all make valiant
attempts at eating our food and then decide to head back to the condo.
Once we are back inside my
grandmother decides to go to sleep immediately. My Dad and I hang out for a
little bit longer. We mostly talk about my other grandmother, whose health is
not good. The conversation is dark and I dread the day when I have to watch my
parents lose their parents.
Eventually we go to bed. Tomorrow is
our last morning in this lovely condo.
