Cardiff By The Sea—Tuesday
Summer heat, ocean breezes and plunging, and flashback to cool summers in northern Michigan and my first boyfriend…as a sixteen year old…in the mid 60’s.
Bill…Norwegian heritage…carefree, fun and sensitive artist/ gymnast. We zoomed and splashed our way across and around Crystal Lake in his hydroplane when we weren’t porpoise diving down into the lake…and for three years, our summer ‘thing’ held through the remaining seasons. My mother scowled rather regularly at his habitual eradication of every single raspberry in the fridge, and the fact that he didn’t seem to understand that her aging mother required spit spot manners and ‘he must stand when I enter the room’…but Bill was wonderful and our late night beach star gazing nights were allowed without question, but midnight was the outerlimit of my curfew.
Then one night we fell asleep on his cottage porch curled up under a blanket and the hours passed. I woke to a flashlight winding its way up the wooded path and my father’s voice “Francie?” He flashed the light on us and then doused it quickly, turned his back and said “Come on”. I jumped up and pulled myself together crying “Dad! It’s not what it looks like! Really…we were just snuggling…really….you have to believe me!” Bill sleepily woke up and sat up and said “Wow! Sorry! What time is it?”
“Francie, get in the car, I need to talk to Bill.”
“Dad, I promise it was just a mistake, please don’t be mad at him.”
“Get in the car.”
Dad went on up to the porch.
“Bill, you need to hear something very important.”
“When you are with a girl, or a woman, you need to be responsible. Your reputation won’t be affected in any way, but hers could be, forever. If I had been anyone but who I am..someone who did not know the two of you, flashing a flashlight on two young people, clothes questionable, under a blanket in the night, terrific damage could have been made to her reputation. I want you to promise me that you will take care of any woman you are with. Privacy…behind locked doors.”
Bill told me later that he was terrified but that my dad was the coolest, and years later he told me that he kept his promise.
I was grounded for a week.
Perhaps old fashioned particulars, but integrity and responsibility are never old fashioned.
Summer Breezes!