The beach is empty this morning, and devoid of tourists. The weather is forty-nine degrees. The water is what we Gulf Coast people would call, “bathwater.” The air is what we thin-blooded Florida writers refer to as, “cold enough to freeze a dog’s pee midstream.”
I am dutifully typing on a laptop, working on another novel. Working on a novel is a lot like driving across Texas. You drive for an eternity until eventually you realize that, hey, you’re still in Texas. And even if you were to turn around and drive the other way, you’re still going to be driving through Texas for a very long time.
Not far from my chair is an older couple. I’d say early seventies, late sixties. They don’t have chairs, their haunches are nestled right in the flour-white sand. They are covered in a thick plaid blanket, sipping from a steaming thermos.
It’s a good day for beach-sitting. The sun is low, making its ascent into a pink morning sky. The Gulf is spearmint green.
The man
has a mane of white; she wears the universal floppy straw hat all old ladies wear. Their arms are draped around one another, and they are watching seafoam.
I amble over and introduce myself to start the conversational ball rolling because I need a break from “driving across Texas.”
Our talk gets personal when I ask how long they’ve been married.
“Been married twenty-three years,” the man says. “We were both married previously, our spouses died.”
They both lost their significant others to brain cancer, twenty-some-odd years ago. It was the same rare kind of brain cancer, too. The odds were astounding.
“We were shocked to find that connection,” she says. “We took it as a sign from God, that we were meant to be together. What else could it have meant?”
They got married in a hurry. The day of their wedding was their three-month…