I'm on a beach on the Emerald Coast in Florida. It is sticky hot and I am itching to get in the water. Especially since there is a bottlenose dolphin mere yards from shore, frolicking just past the break. I can almost hear him calling out to me: "Come in, Beth! Wade past the thick, snake-like June grass and swiiimmm with me!" This is my moment, my time to commune with the great marine mammals of the sea.
My phone rings. It's the kids, calling from Vegas where they are vacationing with their dad. I am on my own vacation. I could leap for the water right then and call them back later. But I don't. Being a dutiful, loving mother, I answer. It could be a quick phone call, right? Once I tell them a dolphin is waiting for me, they'll say a nice I love you and hang up. After all, I'm on vacation.
"I just saw a dolphin!! He wants me to swim with him!"
Nick is on the other end. "That's nice. I got thrown up on last night."
"Um...what?"
"I. Got. Thrown. Up. On."
He's there in Vegas with his cousins. I wonder which one overate. "Eww. Who got sick?"
"No. You don't understand. I went to the bathroom in some casino. And I was closing the bathroom stall and some random guy burst through the door and threw up on me."
"What?" This isn't going to be a quick one.
"Yeah. And then he left and went into the other stall and threw up in there."
"And it was all over you? Like, you were covered in vomit?"
"Yeah. And then I left the stall and some Japanese dude was standing by the sink and he says to me, 'Ohhhh, looks like he gotcha!'."
The sweat is pooling and the dolphin is becoming less frolick-y. I think he's becoming impatient.
"Well, what did you do?"
"I took off my shoes and handed them to Max."
"Why?"
"Because they were covered with throw up and I didn't want to hold them. And Max says to me, 'What's all this on your shoe?' and I tell him and he drops it. So I made Daddy carry them."
"Oh." I don't want to cut him off. But there is a dolphin waiting for me!
He continues. "So we went back to the hotel room and I took a shower and then we threw my shoes into the bathtub."
"Well, good. So it all ended up okay." The dolphin is moving further out. I decide to help Nick along. "I'm glad. Say, I'm getting kinda hot and the dolphin is still --"
"But then we went to bed and I had to get up in the middle of the night to pee."
"Uh-huh."
"So I went into the bathroom and stepped in something wet. And I was kinda worried that someone else had thrown up in our bathroom."
"Yeah, I could see that..." I crane my neck. The dorsal fin is disappearing.
"But it wasn't."
"Oh, good. OK, hon. I'm gonna --"
"Nah, it turns out Daddy left the tap running in the bathtub. So the water overflowed."
"What?"
"Yeah. He forgot to turn the water off. So we had to clean up the whole bathroom. At like one o'clock in the morning!"
Gone. The dolphin is G-O-N-E.
I sigh and settle back into my beach chair. "Wow. Why don't you tell me about it?"
"I just did. Anyway, we're going to breakfast now. Love you, Mom. Bye!"
He hangs up on me. I race toward the water. I maneuver past the wall of June grass tangled in the surf. The dolphin is long gone. A man wearing a cowboy hat stands a few yards away from me.
"Better keep an eye out. Just saw a jellyfish right about where you're standin'."
That is one marine creature I don't wanna commune with. So I wrestle back through the seaweed and make my way to my chair.
Thoughts of the dolphin are gone. Instead, I'm thinking about vomit and Vegas...and how I'll always wait for my kids. Sometimes patiently. Sometimes not.
Even when a dolphin is almost waiting for me.
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