“Memory is a child walking along a seashore.  You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.”

~Pierce Harris

On your mark, get set, GO!

The lobsters lay listless; the two-thousand mile trip had surely left them spent.

“Why aren’t they racing?”  Max stared at the four little crustaceans, frozen on the floor like a short row of armored idols, long antennae laying still beneath the wind from the fan blades.

For the last year and a half, Mia has been asking to have a lobster race for her birthday.  Daisy and I didn’t quite believe her when she was turning six, but after remaining fixed on her desire for the last twelve months, we knew she had no chinks in her sincerity.

It was all she wanted.  No party, no clothes, no toys.  Nothing outside of a good old fashioned crustacean competition.  Mia knew about mommy and daddy’s race a half decade before her birth and wanted to know what it would be like, as though hearing skittering sea insects scratching across our Spanish tile would somehow transport her back through time and show her the world her parents inhabited before it shifted orbit.

But the lobsters refused to race.

One might imagine the lobster’s complete lack of interest in fulfilling our little girl’s dream  would have somehow stunted her evening.

It wasn’t so.

Mia loved managing her pets for the brief two hours before feasting on their tender white meat.  She was concerned about their languor and did everything she could to nurse them back to lively health.  We moved them to the bathtub and bathed them in shallow water.  This did manage to add a slight improvement to their disposition.

We thought Mia tenderly tending to the lobsters was a bit like the old witch fattening Hansel and Gretel as she prepared the oven.  To her aunt’s delight and horror, Mia is both animal lover and born carnivore.  She loves tearing into meat while discussing which adorable animal she’s feasting upon.

Last night’s lobsters were the first I’ve eaten since that dueling duo a decade before.  The critters that evening were fresh from the tank, still lively in the few hours in between their final bath before it boiled.  Back in the time before children when Daisy and I were comparatively sick with time and money.  These lobsters, a third the size, had probably given up somewhere around the clouds over Missouri.

Mia’s lobsters may have lain motionless, but were delectable nonetheless.  She savored every bite and begged for a little more, slowly savoring her share before swallowing her brothers.  Max didn’t care too much for the lobsters, at least not half as much as he would have a quesadilla.

We desperately wanted for Mia’s lobsters to race.  We wanted the manufacture of her memory to match the fantasy she had built inside her head, but we cannot choose the construction of our recall; they are towering edifices in the cities of our mind.  Those memories were hers, not some refashioned version of ours.

Mia didn’t get to travel through time, but she did get exactly what she wanted.  Not something tangible to play with, only adding to the ever mounting pile of bric-a-brac that clutters most every childhood (including her own).  Mia asked for a slice of forever.

All she wanted was a memory, and that was everything we had to give.

Writer Dad

Ghostwriter Dad is now offering custom wedding vows in addition to custom wedding speeches. I may be a Long Beach writer, but my words are all over the world!