15. Fifteen
“I don’t understand what the big deal is. It’s just a big hole in the ground.”
Week three on the road and Finn is irritated by everything as we drive. Namely, the fact that the AC in the cab of the truck isn’t consistently working. And he hates my coffee. And he found out his friends are registered for a big fishing tournament this weekend he clearly can’t take part in.
“Finn, are you serious? The Grand Canyon is so much more than a hole in the ground!” I argue from the driver’s seat.
“Whatever,” he mutters, clearly annoyed. “Are we about done with this yet? It’s been two weeks, and now the dumb AC isn’t working.” He slams his hand against the vent closest to him. “Can we just go home? I mean, what else do you want to do here, Mom? You seem happier now. Can’t we just get back to our lives yet? It’s not like Dad’s here to care about his stupid list of places, anyway.”
The last words are nearly drowned out by the sound of him kicking his foot against the floorboard.
I grip the steering wheel and swallow hard—inhale for four, exhale for four—before I speak.
“You’re fishing for an argument I’m not having while I have sweat dripping down my damn neck, and we are minutes to one of the most amazing things on this planet. Just because you’re pissed off your friends are doing something without you, you don’t get to ruin this.”
When I say I don’t want to argue, what I really mean is I am one response away from pulling the godforsaken Avion over and leaving him to fend for himself against whatever is out there.
He stares out the window.
The truth is, Finn isn’t the only one who is frustrated. The road is slowly sucking the nice out of all of us. There’s so much on Travis’ list and with the distances between everything, there’s little time left for us to enjoy any of it. Something like seeing the Grand Canyon should be exciting, but today, it feels like just another box to check.
Apparently, one that Finn doesn’t want to check at all.
The cool breeze that meets us once we get out of the Avion is a welcome reprieve. Hints of sage and pine float in the air as we follow the signs toward an overlook. Every breath feels like the world’s first oxygen as it fills my lungs.
We turn a corner, blindly following the crowd of tourists along the sidewalk, as the sun dips low and wispy clouds are sketched across the sky.
Finn points to a secluded spot tucked between two big rocks with a clear view into the canyon we’ve yet to see. As we walk over to it, what’s hidden beyond the ledge comes into view and brings me to a stop.
Marin squeezes my arm with a whispered “Whoa!”
I’ve seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. I knew what to expect as far as shape and terrain. I knew it was big. I knew it was so steep on the edge that people died falling into it. I’ve read that pictures never capture the bigness of it all and can never prepare anyone for what it feels like to physically stand there and see it.
In that moment, I know they are right. Despite it being a moment devoid of sadness, tears fill my eyes.
Finn crouches on the rocky ground while I drink in the view like a thirsty traveler at a much-needed water fountain.
The cliff edge we sit on drops down sharply before sloping out into a jagged ledge and then dropping down once more before repeating the shape. It continues that way, a concoction of cliffs and formations sloping down into the ground, a mile below us and miles out around us. The Colorado River curves below us like an unraveled spool of thread.
“It’s like looking in the belly of a mountain,” Marin says, eyes wide. “I can’t believe how big it is.”
I turn to Finn slowly. “Still think it’s just a big hole in the ground?”
“Fine, an impressive hole in the ground.”
His smile is faint and fleeting.
I sit next to him and hug my knees to my chest.
“It’s insane, really. Water flowing the way the water just flows, did all of this.” I stare out into the bigness of it, trying to comprehend how such a place exists.
“Oh yeah, this place has some major jubilee vibes, right?”
Marin smiles, her short sandy hair blowing softly in the breeze. She’s right. Dickey would most definitely say the formation of the Grand Canyon is no different from the random abundance of mullet on the Mobile Bay shore.
From where we sit, we can see a fenced-off lookout below us. The people that fill it—doing everything from taking photos with expensive cameras to leaning on the railing with teary eyes—are as unique as the formations they gape at. Big guys who rode in on motorcycles, covered in tattoos and leather vests, look on with the same expression as the elderly woman with a walker. Gay, straight, old, young, Mexican, Asian, and everything in between. A dozen different languages are being spoken at once as the darkness starts winning the war against the light in the sky.
Wandering souls, all pulled here for one reason or another, looking for beauty, meaning, and whatever else they can find in a cracked-open section of the earth. Beauty that exists regardless of the pain and emptiness each of us feels in the holes in our hearts that make us human.
A deluge of emotion washes over me at the enormity of it all.
“Mind if I pull up a seat?”
An old man stands behind us with a collapsed canvas chair and a wide smile.
“By all means. Seems to be big enough for all of us.”
I smile, gesturing toward the canyon in front of us.
He’s wearing a navy-blue Mackinac Island sweatshirt that pulls tightly across his belly and a hat that says World’s Best Grandpa! over a head of short gray hair. He drops into his chair and sighs at the view.
“Don’t see stuff like this in Iowa!” he says with a chuckle.
“Florida either,” I reply.
“My wife always wanted to see this place, but we never made it. Cancer took her in January,” he says to the emptiness.
I don’t say anything, thinking of Travis and him also never seeing it.
“My wife always said that the Grand Canyon proved God is a glass half-full kind of guy.”
“How so?”
“My wife, Margie, she said that you wouldn’t go to the Grand Canyon and look for what’s not there. You’d look for what’s left. Said the Colorado River ran through here and took a lot, but what it left behind is the real treasure. She’d say, ‘Ned, canyons aren’t about the absence. They are about what remains. Artifacts of survival and patience and slow weathering. If people looked over that edge and only looked for the missing ground, they wouldn’t see the beauty. It’s God’s glass half-full.’ She was ever the optimist, right until the end.”
His friendly eyes look sad, but still—he smiles.
“My husband wanted to come here but also never made it. He would have probably agreed with Margie.”
“Then you know,” he says.
I look at him, not sure I do, and he reads my silence as his signal to go on.
“You know about the people who come into our lives with their love and change us as much as the Colorado River changed this unforgiving landscape. The ones that cut right through you and carve you into who you are supposed to be. They move slow and steady, eroding what we were away. What they leave behind are the ruggedly beautiful remains that remind us forever of their existence.”
“The rivers that run through us,” I say.
“The rivers that run through us.”
Then we’re quiet, because ultimately, words don’t matter when sitting in a place like this. My days have been easier, but as I stare out into the humongous gorge that stretches out in front of us, I feel Travis’ absence as much as I feel the ground beneath me. As sure as I’m sitting on this ledge, he is not.
“Mom, listen, about earlier.” Finn fumbles with a small rock in his hands. “I shouldn’t have said that stuff. I was just hot and...”
His face looks as tired as mine.
“It was hot, Finn.”
I squeeze his knee, hoping it says everything I need to say.
Marin yawns as the sun dips almost completely under the horizon line.
“How about we get going and make those burgers we got ingredients for?”
I don’t need to ask twice—they both nod before standing and immediately start toward the Avion.
As I start to follow them, I stop, turning to Ned.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Now? We figure out a way to live without them. But it won’t be the same for us. I’m an old man. I’ll spend my days happily dancing in the cracks she left behind, but you’re young. You won’t ever have another Colorado River, of course, but I have a feeling there’s more than one kind of river that runs through us in our lifetimes, anyway. Every river can’t make the Grand Canyon, but that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Margie was my second wife. She came through and smoothed out the edges from my first wife, who I lost twenty years ago. They carved me differently. The way they loved, and I loved them—it’s all part of it. You’ll see.”
He smiles sagely, like he knows something I don’t, before giving me a small salute and turning back to the amazing view.
The kitschy tourist traps that line the entrance road out of the park slowly give way to the now dark, empty desert roads—like all that beauty is trying to stay a secret.
I drop my head back to the headrest and let out a breath the wind steals as it blows through the windows. I smile and turn up the music as I chase the last drops of daylight down the highway.
***
“This is the best burger I’ve ever eaten,” Finn says between bites.
I laugh, because of course it is, even without the Maine ingredients.
“He’s right, Mom,” Marin says before taking another bite. “What is this?”
I clear my throat, shifting behind the dinette. “A guy I emailed for grandpa about the restaurant sent it to me.” Then, “Not about the restaurant, just a recipe, you know?”
Marin’s eyes narrow. “Of course it’s a recipe, what kind of comment is that? Either way it’s good.”
I smile. Right.
That night in bed, without overthinking it too much, I grab my phone and send Ethan the review.
Ethan,
I hate it when a recipe says ‘salt to taste.’ What the hell does that even mean? Are you supposed to taste it raw? How am I supposed to know how much salt will make an entire pound of beef taste good? I think it’s something people put in recipes because they are either lazy or want to make sure nobody else’s food turns out as good as theirs. Or maybe it’s because their recipe isn’t actually good, but they can always fall back on ‘you must have used too much/little salt’ when there’s a complaint.
But.
Somehow, I got it right because my kids said they were the best burgers they’ve ever had.
Go figure.
And if you didn’t like the daiquiri, I would have been done. It’s a personality flaw at that point and one I just can’t get over.
Penelope
It’s only after I push send I realize I didn’t ask a single question about the restaurant.