Waiting for Sunrise  

“I think we need to go to the beach,” my husband says.

We’re sitting in the Adirondack chairs on our front porch, coffee mugs in hand, waiting for sunrise. I can’t see him smiling in the early morning twilight, but I know he is.

“It’s kind of cold,” I say.

“It’s not that cold,” he says.

“It’s such a long ride, and it’s probably not going to be sunny there.”

“Actually, it is,” he says. “I already checked the radar.”

Of course he did. He always thinks ahead.

“How about clamming?” I throw out.

This stops him.

“Really? It’s November,” he says slowly. “You want to go clamming?”

“Nah,” I say. “I was just testing you. It’s too fucking cold.”

*

In fact, it’s almost never too cold for clamming.

When I go to the beach, I rarely venture out into the ocean to swim, but I’ll strip down to underwear and a T-shirt and wade into the saltwater clam pond hidden in the dunes of Fire Island.

“You’re going in like that?” he often says. “It’s kind of chilly.”

“You get used to it,” I tell him, kneeling in the water, my hands raking at the sand, feeling for the hard shell of a clam.

It’s exhilarating every time I find one.

I grasp it in the palm of my hand, and my fingers curl tightly around it. Before placing it into the blue netted bag beside me, the one that snaps shut so none can escape, I peer at it, surveying the blueness of the shell.

The water is often freezing, but in that moment, I never care.

*

We pack the car and pick up a turkey sandwich that we’ll share later as we sit on a towel and gaze out at the sea. After ninety minutes of traffic on the Throgs Neck Bridge, the Cross Island Parkway, and the Southern State, we drive over the causeway leading to Robert Moses State Park.

*

“Aren’t we going in there?” I say, pointing to the gated section for those with the state permit allowing them to drive onto the beach.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to go clamming.”

“Let’s do it,” I say.

He looks surprised. “I didn’t bring the compressor.”

You can’t drive on the sand with fully inflated tires. But you need the compressor to refill them so you can get back on the road.

We make our way over to the Field 2 parking lot, the one anyone can use. 

“We’d better take the sand chairs with us,” he says, not quite looking at me. 

He knows. 

We stuff our backpacks with books and food and make our way down to the water. 

The wind is brutal. After a few minutes, he looks at me. “What do you think?” 

What I think is, I wish we could drive over to the clam pond, but I don’t say it. 

“Too windy.” 

We head back to the car and put everything into the trunk. I’m about to open the passenger door when he stops me. 

“Wait a minute.” He walks over and puts his arms around me, pulling me close. “You need to be here,” he says. “We both do.” 

My eyes fill with tears because I know he is right. 

“Let’s try it again,” he says gently. 

*

We grab our sweatshirts and sandwich and start walking along the shoreline and don’t stop for miles. Something about that helps me to breathe in a way I have not been able to for days since we heard she was gone. This man will do anything to save my heart. He has stuffed the blue netted clam bag into his backpack, just in case. 

*

And I know he is so afraid that it could have been me, instead of her, who simply dropped to the ground and died. 

 *

I take his hand. 

“Let’s just walk to the point,” I tell him. “The clams can wait until spring.” 

LYNN EDELSON

Lynn Edelson’s narrative essays have appeared on or in the NYC Listen to Your Mother show, Writers Read/Read650, Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope Festival, Every Family’s Got One, and the HerStry blog. She is the mother of two grown sons and lives in Putnam County with her husband, Michael Principe.