Cargo Beach

When most people who had been to Florida thought back on their time there, they tended to picture the same things.

The luxurious, saturated feeling of hot Southern sun on their skin. The impossibly sweet tang of fresh oranges on their tongues. All of the colors, and flavors, and sights, and sounds that filled your senses when you walked through the streets of some of the cities.

But for Daniel, it was always the sight of the cargo ships pulling into port. When he was a little boy, he used to love the way the multi-colored cargo containers reminded him of his Legos at home, and his child’s mind couldn’t help but think of them the same way – especially once his mother told him that they contained all sorts of things for people to buy.

He imagined that they were full of the types of wonders that were so awe-inspiring to little boys – wonders like toys, and motorcycles, and neon-colored poster paints – items that could wind up beautifully wrapped underneath Christmas trees in December. And at night, he’d fall asleep and dream of the ships, of growing up to be someone who owned an entire fleet of them and got to work with those colorful containers all day long.

Daniel was a full-grown adult now. But he still remembered watching the port he liked to call Cargo Beach and dreaming about the future. He still remembered what it was like to think a cargo ship owner must be the happiest, luckiest man in the world, because how could you be anything else in the possession of all those textured metal rectangles filled with possibility.

Now all he saw were objects that had no choice in where they were sent, how they got there, or how they’d be used by the hands they fell into. And that was much too much like real life for comfort some days.

*

Janie was beautiful in the impossibly bright spring sun. She had grass stains on her dress from rolling around in the daisy patches in an attempt to become more like them. When she laughed, it sounded like a million little bells jingling somewhere far away.

Her lips and fingertips were stained purple from all the blackberries they’d spent the afternoon picking and devouring as if they were the world’s finest food and they were never going to eat again.

Daniel had just fallen to the ground after spinning around as fast as he could while staring at the sun, just as his mother had always told him not to do. But he couldn’t help it. Something so warm and bright was impossible not to look at.

The insides of his eyelids danced and swam with all sorts of imagined flashes, starbursts, and orbs, arguably Daniel’s favorite part of his sungazing sessions. He loved how it made him see things that were not there, although they were no less real to his imagination for that fact.

Life was so simple when you were ten years old. All you needed to be happy was sunshine on your face, berry stains on your fingers, and an imagined future that was full of colored cargo crates that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

And Daniel would go home at the end of those days carrying huge baskets full of all the sweet, ripe blackberries that he and Janie couldn’t eat. And his mother would exclaim with delight when she saw them before promising to bake him the most wonderful pie the next day.

Life was good then. Back when carrying heavy loads that made your little arms ache was well worth it because it meant a blackberry pie was in your future. Maybe even with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting languidly on top while it was still warm.

*

Life was a little more complicated at seventeen, but surprisingly not by much, although that’s not at all how things seemed at the time. Janie had grown into the kind of tall, beautiful girl you couldn’t imagine ever having had grass stains on her dress, even at ten years old.

The lip gloss she wore to school every day reminded Daniel of the sun-warmed blackberries she’d loved to eat when they were little kids together. And it tasted like them, too, that time Janie had given him his first kiss after a school dance they had gone to together.

When Janie smiled shyly at Daniel in the halls as they were each on their way to their respective classrooms, his skin felt prickly and warm, just as it had always felt under the warm Florida sun during all those long summers as a kid.

He carried a bag full of books and found objects on his shoulder all day until it ached.

And deep inside of himself, somewhere in the middle of his chest behind his heart, Daniel carried a map. It was a map of the trail that led up a mountain. It was steep, and long, and it twisted this way and that in ways that weren’t always convenient. But at the top, he knew there was something wonderful waiting in that spot that was so close to the sun.

Never mind that he didn’t live anywhere near the mountains. That was nothing more than a technicality. And all technicalities can be fixed given enough time and determination.

*

Daniel’s first grown-up job wasn’t quite what he imagined. He had gone to work in a warehouse near the water on the suggestion of a friend who also worked there. He thought it would be fun – good, clean, hard work while on the clock, and good conversation and humble, hearty cheese sandwiches with his friend during break time.

But really, it was just work. The influx of boxes seemed endless. These light ones needed to be stacked over here, and then immediately afterward, those heavy ones had to be pushed over there. Half the time, Daniel had no idea what was even in them. And the child he once used to be would have been so surprised and disappointed to know that he didn’t care.

There was no color on any of these boxes or anywhere else in the warehouse. Everything was brown, and beige, and shale grey, and puce. It was cold here, not to mention damp, and it smelled vaguely of mushrooms all the time.

Daniel had always thought working for a living would be magical and exciting somehow. He was a simple guy who took pleasure in all sorts of simple things, so he didn’t even particularly care what kind of work he did. He was just excited about being useful.

But these days, here in the damp and the beige away from the sun and the air, something seemed very off. And something inside of Daniel, something inside his chest behind his heart where he kept that map of the mountain, had a sinking suspicion this was what life really was.

Endless, slate-grey days that broke your back and had no meaning or point beyond moving nondescript brown boxes full of nameless things from one place to another. Days without paths or maps that took you precisely nowhere.

*

As Daniel got older, he forgot about the map behind his heart. He forgot about mountains, and sun-warmed blackberries, and his mother’s pies. However, he did still sometimes think about the grass stains on Janie’s dress when she was a little girl.

He remembered thinking they were beautiful because she was beautiful, and the stains were evidence of all the fun that permeated life back then.

Janie was Daniel’s wife now. And he still thought she was beautiful, but life with all its ordinariness and drudgery had begun to get to her, too. Sometimes her eyes still sparkled the way they used to when something would catch her off guard or their daughter Bobbie would hug her unexpectedly.

But mostly they were just full of clouds, just as he knew his own eyes were full of clouds. The imaginary map, the daisies, and the colored cargo crates full of possibility seemed so far away now. And sometimes they even seemed silly.

But other days, something small would remind Daniel of the way things used to be when carrying things was a pleasure that led to inevitable reward – the sight of a butterfly somewhere he didn’t expect to see one or a sunset that turned the whole sky carnation pink for a while.

On those days, he could remember everything the way it used to be. And something deep inside of him realized this was the same world, only seen from a less idealistic perspective. In those moments, it seemed worth it.

It was during those moments that Daniel remembered the secret compartment behind his heart, the one where the map was, and he’d find a little piece of the moment at hand and put it there, too.

*

More cardboard boxes filled with things. Only these were moving boxes, and the things inside belonged to Daniel and Janie and Bobbie – all the threads of the life tapestry they were weaving together.

Daniel worked in advertising now, and he’d landed a new job filled with new potential out in California – a little firm based just outside of Lake Tahoe, actually. Mountains. And trails to explore, with or without a map. And an unfamiliar sun that would still make Daniel’s skin prickle.

Together, Daniel and Janie packed their boxes and stacked them neatly in the back of the U-Haul they’d rented. Bobbie played on the lawn until it was time to leave. She had grass stains on her dress, and for a moment, the little boy Daniel used to be saw Janie standing there, laughing and smiling without a single care in the world.

And later that day, as they left Florida together, Daniel felt the afternoon sun on his arm and happiness in his heart. This was one of those moments when the world opened up and made him feel like it was all worth it. That it was always worth it.