Trying to Have a Fresca

“Can I get you a soda?” Don, my (then) father-in-law asked me.

I was standing in Don’s vacation trailer, Dan (my future ex-husband) and Mike (my future ex-brother in law), sitting on a couch nearby. Dan, Mike, and I had driven down to see Don and to relax for the day. I must have had plans to drive somewhere, as I was being offered soda and had not brought my own beer to drink.

Before I moved to New Jersey, Dan had told me about his dad’s vacation trailer down by the shore. I think it was near Ocean City, although in the years that I have passed I seem to have forgotten. I looked at a map as I sat down to write this and realized everything in that part of NJ is near the water and has “ocean”, “sea”, or “beach” in its name. But since those places were nearly all the same, assigning the trailer to be Ocean City-adjacent in my memories is just as well.

Prior to living in New Jersey and visting it in person, I had never understood Dan’s description of the trailer as being a vacationing-campground type place. I realize now it is definitely more of an East Coast/Great Lakes-area phenomenon. People maintain trailers in campground sites so they can drive down to the shore/lake in the summer. It is usually cheaper than buying and maintaining a residential vacation home on oceanfront/lakefront property. The campground owners are responsible for watching over the closed-up campground during the winter months. Cheaper, less responsibility–there is a lot to like.

I enjoyed driving down to Don’s trailer. I liked the drive itself: you got to see the water and the scrubby pine forests, growing out of the sand. Most of the years I lived in New Jersey were lean ones: we were especially broke and for the first three or four years we lived our there, Dan wasn’t even in good enough health to make short walks. Our vacations were few and far between and were not extravagant. I welcomed a trip to anywhere outside of the 1 bedroom apartment where four of us were living in an improbably small space.

Dan complained about going to the trailer. Dan complained about most things I enjoyed. Dan didn’t like the humid warmth one would often be subject to down at the trailer. He didn’t like the bugs (usually just mosquitos or ants) or the bathrooms, which consisted of either a very small one in the trailer or campground-style bathrooms provided by the park. Dan complained about seeing his father, which always made me angry. While our relationships with our respective fathers were far from identical, Don was not a monster: he was not a good listener, not always empathetic, and was, for many years, a philanderer. But Don was also good-natured and loved to have a good time. I believe he loved his sons the best he knew how.

“I know you don’t always get along perfectly with your dad,” I would say, “but you get along well enough you should make the effort to spend time with him while he is still around.”

So it was my enjoyment of the trips to the trailer and my belief in investing in time with loved ones that usually got us down to the shore during those years.

“What do you have?” I asked in response to Don’s soda offering.

Don was a big man who approached his diet with the same jois de vivre he approached everything else. His healthy appetite combined with a chronic heart condition and a dislike of exercise led to audible straining and wheezing whenever he bent over, even slightly.

“We have Fresca, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi . . . ” Don said, pausing his soda inventory to wheeze and cough.

The combination of Don’s discomfort and having already resigned myself to the disappointment of not being able to have a beer led to quick decision-making on my part.

“I’ll have a Fresca–thanks Don.” I started to move toward the mini-fridge Don was kneeling in front of, hoping to limit the amount of time he would continue to strain and wheeze.

“We have 7 Up, Diet 7 Up, club soda,” Don continued, not registering my choice.

“Don–I’ll have a Fresca, that’s fine,” I said, now standing behind him.

“There’s also Cherry Pepsi, RC Cola, Diet RC,” Don continued. At this point, Mike and Dan started to laugh.

“I’ll have a FRESCA–THANK YOU,” I said loudly and more slowly, in the style of an obnoxious American yelling English at someone they perceive to be foreign-born.

Don turned to look at me, huffing and puffing more as he remained kneeling in front of the fridge. “So James–which one do you want?” I can assure you by the look on his face, he genuinely had not heard my earlier requests. Dan and Mike doubled over laughing, puzzling their father.

This story joined the family lore cannon for the time remaining between then and when I left Dan about three years later. I visualize all stories which people retell as having invisible “tags” that bring them back into conversation again and again. The tag for this soda at the shore story was typically “Don’s inability to really listen to what someone is saying”. Don was, as I mentioned before, a terrifically bad listener. Although some of this behavior as he got older could be attributed to his hearing getting worse, he was also the sort of person you could have a phone discussion with, only to discover your conversation had diverged into two different directions: the conversation you thought you were having and the separate conversation Don wanted to have with you.

But there is something else I have come to realize about stories like these, that get told over and over again. You can hear these stories for years before you realize there is a whole different moral underlying the tale, like the time I forgot to pack my suitcase for a trip to Salt Lake City.

I thought back to this story the other day. Now when I think back to times in my past, I often imagine how things would have been different if Basil were there. I don’t know when I started doing this Quantum Leap-type thinking with Basil and my past, but it has definitely become a habit.

And when I thought of Basil being there, I realized this story would have turned out differently. First and foremost, Basil would never sit by while someone ignored, intentionally or otherwise, what I was saying. Instead of sitting there and laughing, like my stupid ex-husband did, I am certain Basil would have interjected, kindly explaining to Don I had made a choice. (There would also be no soda-drinking for me if Basil was around, but that isn’t the point.) Which made me realize all the of the times Dan or Mike retold this story, part of what they were laughing at was not just their father’s inability to listen to me, but they were also laughing at me being ignored.  And when you look at my first marriage as a whole, everyone else ignoring what I wanted and me accepting everyone else ignoring what I wanted is a recurring theme.

I am a big proponent of having a sense of humor. I am a big proponent of laughing at yourself and not taking life too seriously. But I understand now that I also need to be able to understand when a joke is at my expense. And I am so thankful to have a husband who loves me enough to really listen to me.