March of 2017

that autumn me and my sister spend a lot of time at the beach, playing house all day on the terrifying sandstone ledges baked warm in the sun. mum protests but allows it until a large wave explodes in foam and diamonds just below our feet and she says Get down, now. 

The hotel dining room is gorgeous,  with a big window and beyond that a road that snakes around the cliffside and into the night. chocolate mud cake arrives, proud on its happy little plate. cherry garnish speckled and smudged around our little mouths. mum jokes about ordering from the kids' menu so she can get a slice herself. give her half of mine.

Mum crying in the tourist stop not far from the beach as we let her buy us beanie-boos. the tile floor is sandy and wet with seawater beneath my bare feet. 

Mum crying on the phone to gramma who is crying too as i gaze down at my converse. me and my sister take up four white chairs to play 3DS. The old men on life support take a liking to us and give us easter chocolate but they smell like hospital so I never eat them. show them our new beanie-boos. catch many new pokemon. catch the taxi home.

every night we order cake from room service and eat it on the balcony in the damp evening swarm. we scribble Moana lyrics inside a little green notebook with a wide-eyed kitten on the cover. sometimes we remember wrong and argue. mum doesn't touch the cake this time. 

beach again in the morning. sandstone hot against our calloused feet and cool tide welcome. how sweet and easy, to be gangly and tanned in the summertime, nine years old and wondering exactly how it would feel to throw yourself against those waves over and over and  just be slapped against the shoreline until everything is better.

beach, hospital, room service at night. 

He's getting stronger every day, I assure the taxi driver. He's gonna be so okay. And besides, we get to do the egg hunt in the lobby now, with all the other kids and the girl from the swimming pool. Which means even more chocolate!

see, i couldn't conceptualise any other alternative to the paramedics sailing in with the stretcher, efficient and heroic in their clinical whites and blues. adults figure things out and fix them, that's how it goes. and it does; on the last night of our stay he is with us again in the hotel room. 

So you've really lived on chocolate cake all this time? 

We all laugh and smile. and he grins and lifts the fork to his mouth; the very mouth that cried out for no air. but he doesn't swallow. 

Come to the beach with us tomorrow! i say, but 'tomorrow' doesn't feel like it's promised anymore. i realise in this moment that everyone is always very scared. But i keep that from my sister.