Eaker-Liberty

August 4, 2007

The waves were breaking too close to shore to have much fun with the boogie board, but the water was clean, cool, and inviting, and I gave it a try anyway.

Several years ago, a friend of mine tried to teach me to surf. We went whenever we could, which included getting up at six in the morning and driving to Long Island to sneak in an hour or two before work. I even bought a wetsuit so I could extend the lessons into November. I never got very good at it, though, so I was sympathetic to the 200-pound twelve-year-old surfer that Deborah and I watched from the shore.

"Droopy drawers," my mother would've called him, his ass shining pink in the sun. He wasn't able to paddle out very far. Every time a wave came in, he'd fall off his board, struggle to stand up against the undertow, then pull up his swim trunks and try again. His friend was further out, but there weren't any waves to ride, so who knows if he was any good, either.

Not much else to say about the beach. Kids playing frisbee, a golden retriever diving after a ball his owner threw, and coming out wet and happy, young girls strutting and posing in bikinis recently bought at the mall, old couples walking hand in hand along the shore. One woman had a surgical mask covering her face, and we imagined all the possible reasons why.

When we were finally tired of getting hot and cooling off, getting hot and cooling off, we packed up our things and left.

"That was fun."

"Yeah, that was fun."

The next day, my parents took us for a ride past blueberry farms and cranberry bogs to a remote lake hidden deep in the pinelands. Okay, it wasn't that remote or that hidden. The parking lot was nearly full. I wouldn't call it crowded, but each of the half dozen picnic tables was already taken by the time we arrived. We looked around and found a quiet spot for ourselves where we set up a blanket and a couple of folding chairs.

An hour or so later, a guy with a gray ponytail and a long white beard walked over to let us know that he and his wife were leaving.

"If you want the table, you'd better grab it quick before someone else does," he said. "It's only gonna get more crowded as the day goes on, and people get pretty cut throat around here."

The guy was short and round, with a long, deep scar across his chest. He asked where we were from. My mother told him they lived in Barnegat.

"Oh, that's not too far," he said. "We live in Hammonton."

"Blueberries," my father said.

"That's right," the guy said. "That's all they have there: blueberries. It's what I do. I have a blueberry farm. We grow some other stuff, tomatoes and things, but blueberries are all anyone wants right now. Blue gold, they call 'em. They came out with a report recently about how blueberries are good for you, just like they did for cranberries a few years ago. One hundred percent of this vitamin, a hundred percent of that one. That's all you gotta do, say that something is good for you — or good for your kids or whatnot -- then everybody wants it. Them blueberries ain't any good for me, though, I'll tell you that. Alls they do is make me fat. Blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes. I've already had two strokes."

I guess all the blueberry talk inspired my parents because after saying goodbye to the farmer and moving our things to the picnic table, my mother and father went into the woods to pick some wild ones. In the meantime, two deep-tan, tattooed bikini ladies carrying towels and inflatable rafts, followed by a guy carrying a cooler and a hyperactive bulldog/pitbull mix, made a beeline for us. The loudest, tannest woman, a cigarette dangling from her lips, dropped her things on our table and said, "It's okay for us to share this table, right?"

Deborah and I looked at each other. "Well—"

"Is there a problem?" the woman asked.

"Kind of," said Deborah. "For one thing, the dog."

The dog was already walking circles over our blanket.

"He won't bother you. Petey, come here."

The dog ignored her until she called him again. "Petey!"

The guy threw a ball into the lake, and Petey splashed into the water after it.

"This is our side," said the woman. "We always hang out on this side. Sorry."

She turned and headed into the lake.

"No you're not," I said.

She turned. "Huh?"

"You're not sorry."

"Whatever."

She flopped on her pink raft, cigarette still pursed in her lips, and floated into the lake. Her friend was already twenty feet from the shore, sunning herself face up on a purple raft. The guy was playing catch with the dog.

My parents returned with a plastic cup filled with wild blueberries. "What's going on?" my mother asked when she noticed all the crap loaded on our picnic table. We explained what happened.

"Do you guys want to move?' my mother asked.

"No," said my father. "What are we going to do? Get pushed all over the place?"

We did our best to ignore the situation and went about enjoying ourselves, eating wild blueberries and swimming in the tea-colored water.

My father went fishing, Deborah and I went swimming, and my mother sat reading. The woman came out of the water and spoke to her. "I'm Jackie," she said. "I'm sorry about what happened. I just kind of came over here and dropped my stuff without thinking."

I guess she felt bad once she realized it wasn't just Deborah and me, the two city-slickers, that she was walking all over.

"That's okay," said my mother. "It's just the dog that worries me. I can't go in the water with him jumping around in there. If I get knocked down, I can't get up. And my balance isn't very good, so it worries me."

"I understand," Jackie said. "I'm a home care worker. I know how it is when your eaker-liberty is off. But don't let the dog worry you. He won't bother you."

"I'll just wait for my son to help me in the water," said my mom. "That's all."

When I got out of the lake, my mother asked if I would help her. I took her arm and we waded into the water. She handed me a plastic cup and asked me to pour water across her back.

"Oh, that feels so good," she said. "Will you pour it over my head?"

I drenched her hair.

"I noticed that woman came to talk to you," I said. "What did she say?"

"She apologized," my mother said. "And then she said something really dumb."

"What?"

"She said something about my eaker-liberty."

"You're what ?"

"I told her about my condition and that my balance isn't what it used to be, and she said that she was a home care worker and that she understood what it's like when your eaker-liberty is off."

Knowing my mother, we'll be using that word for years to come.

"Eaker-liberty," I said, so that I wouldn't forget it.

We laughed. I scooped up another cupful of water and poured it over my mother's head.

"The water is so nice, isn't it?"