Waving

An iceberg of an ocean and a shoe filled with sand. Ahh, the beach.

I haven't been to the shore since my childhood. Yet, like most migrating hatchlings, I have returned, grown, to roost with my own brood.

"How's the water, Lis?"

That's my brother, Bartholomew Simpson: a college drop-out with two failed marriages. Who knew he would shock us all by finding his footing in a demolition crew? He had been wild before that year; drinking too much, dating strippers, breaking his heart on women he bettered by far.

For those two years between his high school graduation and my own, I wrote him off as a lost cause, something I'm ashamed of now. Working on that demolition crew proved a true boon. It gave him the confidence to apply to community college, to graduate toward the upper-middle of his class.

I was flabbergasted to learn he had applied to law school, but, now that I think about it, Bart has the makings of a good lawyer in his bones. After all, lying - to be more accurate, fibbing - has always been a strong suit for him. We're here today, feting him, because he passed the bar on his first try.

Water collides with my face, and I choke and sputter. "Bart!"

"Got you, Lis!" He shouts, paddling away, and once again he's just my bratty older brother. I'm seven again, trying to dispense the most solid wisdom a child can offer.

If Bart's found a way to use the intelligence that has always dwelled inside his mind, he has yet to settle down with what Mom would call 'The Right Woman'. She told me this morning that she has hope for the future, as Bart mentioned that he had 'bumped into' an old friend of ours. The two of them just happen to be seeing a movie Sunday. I'll have to try to pry her name from his clenched maw. He'll only tell me now that it's nothing serious, but Mom was always the one to hope for the best.

Poor Mom: I worried about her the most when I moved out. She had Maggie to take care of for another three years, but in my sophomore year, my baby sister graduated from high school and moved out of the house, leaving Mom and Dad truly alone for the first time in years.

I don't know why, but I've always felt that she's fragile beneath the can-do exterior she developed to deal with Dad's eccentricity and Bart...eventually Maggie's...wild streak. Bart told me that he felt guilty about moving in with Millhouse during his senior year of high school, but it was something he knew he had to do. If he couldn't always be Mom's "Special Little Guy", I couldn't remain her gifted and emotionally troubled middle daughter.

But, as always, Mom surprised me by thriving. She rediscovered her artistic muse and began painting seriously again. Her landscapes and portraits hang at the Springfield Historical Society and in the homes of private collectors. One stands proud in the graceful confines of a West End gallery. I'm surprised to realize how full her life is, and that's something I learned just by looking at her work. Seeing my family and I appears to keep her together, and I'm secure in the knowledge that she'll always have Dad, but without him...

What can I say about my father? He's still the same man who worked night shifts at the Kwik-E-Mart to buy me a pony. A man who will make a terrible mistake one minute, and then try to make up for it in such a sweet, awkward way that makes it impossible to hate him the next. He's not the most sensitive man, not a perfect father, and not even the patriarch I wished I had, but he loves me.

He worked to keep this family clothed and fed, and though he wasn't entirely successful at that, he went through the strain of mendacity and nuclear contamination for Mom, for Maggie, for Bart and for me. They finally promoted him last year. I still wonder if Milhouse has anything to do with that; he always did see our family as a stable, loving environment, when compared to his own. Poor guy. I probably owe him for setting him up on that date with Maggie.

Now Maggie, to Mom's everlasting angst, knows absolutely no fear. She went right from high school to a job with the Lance Murdock Stunt Show. For awhile, I would follow her exploits through whatever Internet café I could find on the road. I understood that the company had named her a bit of a hellion, due to her constant improvisations before the audience. After three years jumping her dirtbike over sandbars and through half-pipes, she miscalculated a turn, rolled off her ride and tore a few crucial but easily healed ligaments in her knee. This was the proverbial last straw for the Murdocks. They couldn't find a company willing to insure her, anyway. Maggie ended up back in Springfield at twenty-one.

I wasn't surprised to hear that she found her niche at the Springfield Police Department. Dad was thrilled, remembering the free swag officer's families receive. Mom was horrified, remembering the hell she went through being an officer of the law. But Maggie found her true destiny there, and she passed her qualifying exams with exceptional ease. She would normally be out on the beat today, only a stray blow from a felon cracked a bone in her jaw, forcing her to have her mouth wired shut. For Maggie, who never shuts up, this is quite a grievous time.

And I?

I graduated from college with a high GPA, majoring in environmental science. Right away, I had an offer from Greenpeace. I was stationed in Russia, where I wasn't trusted or listened to much. It was reminiscent of the boredom of scrubbing oily rocks with toothbrushes, and the loneliness was almost overwhelming. I took my sax and spent four years bumming around Europe, sewing those wild oats that girls are told we don't have. I was just cautious enough to return with an intact nervous system, and I had the opportunity to improve my French on the local boys. None of the bands I played with stayed together for very long, but I ended up cutting a single with a little jazz trio in a small studio. Mom and dad still have the only copy I received from the pressing of that session.

Three years gave me more than a sample of an artist's vagabond life. It taught me that I crave approval and positive judgment too strongly, and that perhaps I was too sensitive for the life of a professional musician. I returned to the States with more experience than concrete beneath my toes.

I worked in DC for awhile, first on a grant from Georgetown University which helped to further my studies, then as a research correspondent on a bill for environmental reform. Washington remains a corrupt, vile town, and when the grant ran out, I returned to Springfield, moving in to an old apartment in the wharf district.

Life, from then on, worked out differently than I had planned it.

I wasn't surprised to realize that education still held a strong pull in my psyche. I found myself working nights at a fish market to put myself through a course that would lead to a bachelor degree in musical science, to compliment my minor in music education. Like dominos, the future fell into place; the budget for music education had fattened, thanks to order of the government. Music education was reinstated for the high school, and I was the best applicant for the job. Naturally, if I may be vain, I was selected to become the new music teacher at Springfield High School.

Some would consider that a step backward, but I know that I've made the right decision. Why doom another generation to the stifling traditionalism that Mister Largo represented? All of my experience only confirmed one thing for me: I love school. I was born to be a teacher, and if I've made my classes a place for a child to grow and learn, then I've done my job.

I even met my husband at school!

I had been unloading a shipment of recorders in my classroom when a familiar figure walked by. He knocked on the door, and I let him in; he introduced himself as the new science teacher. He was lost, looking for the teacher's lounge, but instead he'd found me. Why did I remind him of a girl he'd spent an afternoon spinning in circles with?

I had been too wrapped up in Milhouse to remember to look up Thelonious in high school. Here was my second chance. We married four years ago. Our children are named for Cather's Antonia and Dante himself, and they brighten my life as nothing before them have done.

"Lisa! Lunch is on!"

On the shore, my mother pours lemonade into paper cups. My father, his belly round and red in the waning sun, has consumed two glasses already, and reaches for more, tossing the old cups onto the sand. My brother pretends to find my husband's explanation of Ohm's Law fascinating, until Dante's monster faces send them both into peals of laughter. My sister sucks her lunch through her straw.

This is my family. They embody the cause of every emotion I've ever felt in my life. I've needed, hated, loved, appreciated, worshipped, and defamed them. I've frozen them out and run home.

I peer at them through the sunshine; my goggles make them seem like convex aliens. I am not of them - I am one of them. They're mine and I am theirs, though I have fought it. I choose not to anymore, for we are clan, kin, blood.

I paddle toward the shore. You see, my family is waving me on, and so I must wave back.

The End