By Sheldon Birnie
The sun cut through the clouds over the lake, lighting up the water like a goddamn miracle. Like how they painted them, back whenever they gave a damn about oil paintings of majestic landscapes. My son, out frolicking as the waves lapped gently ashore. He moved like a sea otter, whenever he got in the water and really got going.
That magic hour before bedtime and sunset, mosquitos and darkness, he just played and played and played while I sat on the white sand, strewn with mayfly husks and zebra mussel shells, drinking navy strength gin and a half a lime. Three pelicans flew in from beyond the point, hovering just above the water, waiting on a fish to dummy up to the surface. I swear I remember every splash, every ripple, though I know that can’t be true. Not after all this time.
The other day a friend caught me unawares, staring out at that same spot of water of an evening. A spot I return to again and again, summer after summer. I’d been dozing, buddy claims. I’d lost track of time, I’ll admit. May have hit my limit on gin. I shot up in a panic, empty cup tumbling from my fingers to the sand, stumbling into the water, calling, calling out for my boy. I thought I’d lost him, out there in the waves. Thought he’d been there, only moments ago, splashing as he had that July evening, decades earlier.
Of course he hadn’t been. I’d lost him long ago, years after that evening in the waves. But it’s that evening I come back to. My little sea otter splashing, and those three pelicans flying low.
Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and the author of Where the Pavement Turns to Sand, a collection of short stories (Makarkey, 2023)