Page 96 of The Last Second Chance
It happened by accident, our desire to do right by the land, by the boys, by each other, that we forgot about what we might need.
One particularly steamy July night, I came home to chaos.
Carter, in his five-year-old glory, had attempted to glue Beckett’s head to the table—thankfully he had gone with Elmer’s and not any of the heavy duty adhesives I had, until that point, left in plain sight throughout the barn and garage. The dog had rolled in something that smelled like a garbage dump full of dead bodies and apparently had eaten a good portion of it, because he threw it up in front of the stove where Phoebe was making dinner.
It had been a long day for me, as well, sweating and bleeding over equipment too old to see it through one more season and fields that were hell bent on being destroyed by drought and those Goddamn spider mites.
I walked into the house and saw the woman I love, the woman my heart beats for, one second away from a justified meltdown. I saw her take a breath, a shallow shaky one, pull it all back in, order the boys upstairs to the bath and the dog outside so she could clean up the mess for no other reason than to be prepared for the next disaster. Our suitcase was by the front door, packed and ready for the Tristate Livestock Auction the next day, and dinner was burning on the stovetop.
I did what I’d learned to do living with a fiery, mule-headed woman who would stubbornly stay the course despite the rocks ahead. I walked into the kitchen, turned off the stove, and poured Phoebe the biggest glass—this time a mason jar—of wine I could find. Then I turned my attention to cleaning up whatever carcass Pancake had retched up.
After a few healthy sips, Phoebe went upstairs to check on the boys, and I started to think. When was the last time we’d had a vacation, just the two of us? The livestock auction certainly didn’t count and every other road trip or winter vacation happened with three boys in tow.
Maybe it was time for a change?
The next morning, we packed up the car and drove the kids to Phoebe’s sister and brother-in-law’s place in the Poconos. And then instead of driving to the auction, I took my wife to the Jersey shore. Her face lit up when I pulled up in front of the shabby bed and breakfast I’d desperately booked the night before. And it made me feel equal parts hero and fool, wishing I had done this years ago.
We spent the next three days lazing on the beach, eating in restaurants that would have horrified our PB and J kids, and pretending we had all the time in the world to do the things we wanted.
We never went back to the auction. Every year after that, the Livestock Auction was code for freedom. It became a tradition that I booked the trip and surprised Phoebe with the destination. We counted down the days to our next adventure together, not as parents or farmers or even adults. But as partners in crime. And crime it became.
This year, with an iffy harvest on the horizon, we stayed close to home to explore the Finger Lakes. The summer was hotter than ever and despite the ice-cold air conditioning in our hotel room and the crystal blue waters of its pool, something crazy took hold of us.
Maybe it was the oysters we shared at dinner. Maybe it was the heady feeling of freedom on our first night away from home. Whatever it was, we found ourselves jumping off a dock on Cayuga Lake at midnight. Naked.
It was as if, between the moonlight and the lake waters, all sense of responsibility and propriety was washed away. We were two souls, enjoying the romance of the moment unhindered by societal and familial roles. Splashing, playing, teasing.
I’d learned long ago that actions spoke louder than words with my Phoebe. A man could say “I love you” ‘til he was blue in the face, but send her out on the porch with fresh lemonade while I do the dishes or surprise her with a ridiculous and completely sappy bouquet of flowers picked in the fields and she heard me loud and clear.
This particular night the only thing we heard loud and clear was “Come out of the water, now,” as spoken by the annoyed state trooper over the loudspeaker of her car.
In our midnight fun, we’d somehow missed her arrival. She stood on the dock, sweating in full uniform, between the discarded piles of our clothes. A consummate professional, we couldn’t tell if she was surprised that she was rousting two forty-year-olds from the cool lake waters.
She handed us our clothes without a hint of a smile, and while I tried to shimmy my way into my underwear, Phoebe babbled on about escaping our three children and our lives at home.
The trooper nodded silently, taking notes in her notebook. She took our licenses back to the patrol car and we dressed quickly, vacillating between laughter and embarrassment. Would our first arrest be for public nudity? In Blue Moon Bend it was a perfectly respectable thing to be arrested for. The community had hosted a clothing-optional Summer Solstice party until the late seventies.
The trooper returned, licenses in hand. She turned them over to us and we waited for the punishment to be meted out.
“I have two kids under the age of two at home,” she said.
And with that, she turned and got back in her car and drove off. No ticket, no citation, no order to appear in front of a judge.
Phoebe and I laughed ourselves silly the whole way back to the hotel where we had to perform a soggy walk of shame past the front desk. It was worth it, every single second, to share that with my wife.
Even now, years later, I can say the words “Cayuga Lake” to Phoebe and we’ll both be transported back to that night, that taste of freedom, that brush with the law. The excitement of a single spontaneous moment.
It’s made us better partners and better parents. As we can easily remember the lure of the moment, the siren song of adventure, and the sting of reprimand. Now, when the boys get caught doing something so stupid you have to wonder if they’ve had a head trauma, I remember Cayuga Lake and the Livestock Auction and I know what it’s like to want to jump head first into freedom.
Jax cleared his throat, trying to dislodge the emotion that clogged it. He’d never be able to put into words what it meant to him to have access to his father like this. Unfiltered by a father-son relationship, just his true words on paper painting a picture of his parents that he’d never had before.
“Everything okay?” Joey asked, over her open book.
He looked at her and smiled. Everything was great. And maybe he’d take a page out of his father’s book and surprise Joey with something besides whispered words of love tomorrow.
But first, he’d text his mother.
Cayuga Lake.
