Swimming the Gulf

“Is that your mother?” A woman on a nearby towel at a Mississippi beach asks me this as I carry the beach umbrella and other paraphernalia back to the parking lot. The Gulf of Mexico is choppy with wind waves. It is June 2018.

I nod.

“Enjoy her,” she says, smiling.

“I do,” I say, and today it is true. Hard work, pain in the ass, landmines everywhere, but today – thank you, god – we had fun. Mom drove us into Bay St. Louis, where she tooled around town, all magnolias and old oaks.  She finds a coffee house she remembers pre-Katrina, “It’s still here!”

“Y’all are adorable,” says our lunchtime waitress, and we are, wearing loose cabooses (aka muu-muus or schmattas). Mine is turquoise with big red hibiscus flowers. Mom wears carmine and yellow with an abstract pattern. She’s sewn both from sarongs. 

We’re easy together, looking at people and places and things. Laughing at the little boy downstairs from the restaurant balcony who’s playing with cookie dough and drinking Co’Cola. Later we get into shallow, murky saline together, swimming in the Gulf, baby.  

Sunset. Now I’m driving her orange Honda Element, along the shore west back to Waveland and Buccaneer State Park, accompanied by Brubeck’s Take Five. We’re salty from our dip, holding hands, windows wide open to cool our skin and ruffle our hair. Jasmine scents the air. She rummages in the glove box, then slides on a pair of big purple shades and says, “How do I look?”

Mighty fine, Mama. Might fine.