I think when my kids grow up and move out that I’d like to go back to the places we took them where they ran and played and laughed without knowing what was coming, not caring about what was next, the places where I watched them be completely free; I want to go back to those spots without them and get drunk. Then my adulthood will have come full circle.
If I manage to hang on to my wife until then, and she accompanies me, I ought to be able to get away with it. I’m not talking about getting belligerent. I’m talking about the kind of drunk where you can still go out to dinner afterwards. Then go back to the spot you started, hit a joint, and go back out to the bar for one more.
“This is the first place I ever smoked pot,” I say to Danyelle. We’re sitting under a tremendous old oak in Hazell Parker Park downtown. There’s an old baseball field behind us, and a little playground and basketball court in front where I just played one-on-one with Cartter. The kids have ditched the playground in favor of the running room offered by the lawn that doubles as an outfield and a dog park. Pedestrians on East Bay Street walking past Rainbow Row don’t notice the little nook. Even the ones that turn down S. Adger’s Wharf bend away towards Waterfront Park, leaving the little playground area relatively unvisited.
My kids are chasing each other underneath the low hanging branches of overgrown shrubs on the other side of the lawn, yelling and laughing as they disappear into a dark tunnel of greenery. When I was 16, I stood not far from that spot and asked my friends, “Can’t we go down to the liquor store and try to get some beer?”
“We’re not getting any beer. Here, hit this.” Bye bye, good little mama’s boy.
The kids run themselves out and sit down to sift through the dirt and take a break. I follow the grand oak’s swirling bark up from its trunk to one of its massive limbs, and something moves, a prehistoric looking bird with a long beak. It turns its head and looks at me from a single, orange eye. It’s a night heron, a juvenile. Its brown spotted plumage blends perfectly with the branch its perched on so that the bird can hide in plain sight.
“This would be a good place to meet up and get drunk and then go out to dinner,” I say to Danyelle. Behind her there’s a rec building that shields us from view of traffic on East Bay, and over top of it, the sun is about to sink past a third story balcony facing Charleston Harbor, its light dancing on the fronds of a tall Palmetto stirred by a gentle breeze coming off the water. Yes, but what are we going to do for dinner tonight? We’ve got to feed the kids.
The night heron hasn’t moved from its perch. It’s sitting there frozen, looking like a knot in the wood of the old oak’s limb. Time for us to go. Walking away, I don’t even make it to the park’s gate before I want to go back.
The Raging Elitist 