The Point

Mary was laughing. Always, when Ben was around, Mary was laughing. Even when she was being serious, her eyes were laughing, or sometimes her shoulders.

After a few sputters, it seemed like spring had finally arrived for good. It was still a bit chilly with the wind, but the sun finally seemed comfortable when the clouds briefly covered it; before it seemed as if the sun was afraid it might disappear behind a cloud forever, but now it was not scared.

We were at the Point, which I have visited too rarely in the last two years. Whatever the weather, the Point is always beautiful. I remember once, it was November I think, and there had been a violent storm. The spray from the lake had lacquered everything in ice, the blades of grass were covered in ice though still defined, the trees were covered (on the side facing the lake), and the stones, which kept the soil of the Point from falling into the sea, they were also coated with translucent, organic ice. The cold was bitter, raw, wet, and yet the sight was so beautiful.

This time, of course, it was not icy. There were dozens of people there, bikers, rollerbladers, families, a few frat brothers who had built a spit over a campfire andwere trying to cook. Mary, Ben, and I laid on a blanked on the grass, out at the end where you can look north to the city, its heights bursting out of the water, or turn around and look south at the vaguely noxious clouds that hover over Gary, IN. But we were, for the most part, not looking north or south, we were looking up, at clouds that looked like the eastern seaboard with a little cloud-Florida on the end, or perhaps like Canada with Greenland just off to the side, or other parts of the cloud-globe.

Ben was in town, having flown in from grad school at UCLA, and he and Mary had gotten a bucket of ribs to eat by the point, and I joined them. They were not ribs so much as rib tips, little bits of meat surrounding bone and cartilage and unknowable pieces of pork. And they were drenched in barbecue sauce, which dripped to the bottom of the bucket - we all agreed that foods that are served in buckets are almost always good - so that the last of the ribs had to be summoned from the depths with weak plastic forks. With the bucket of ribs came a bucket of French fries which were soggy and mostly unappetizing, but the last of the ribs could be laid on the fries, which would absorb the absurd amounts of sauce and leave an almost-edible morsel. Ben joked that French fries were "nature's napkins". And Mary laughed.

As we were all laughing, an old couple walked slowly by us, on the grass instead of the path. They looked at us with an expression of disgust that was probably a reaction to the walk which must have been difficult, but we took the expression as a judgment of us and our youthful revelry. Cranky old people, we thought, cramping our style.

We were, are, so young, sometimes I am amazed at how young we still are. But now, Mary and I at least are facing that time where spending a lazy afternoon - an afternoon which had somehow snuck upon us, which we had not noticed until it was there, having not needed to cherish every moment of it because it seemed so ordinary - sitting on a blanket on the grass eating simply horrific food and laughing at silliness, we are facing a time where that will no longer be so easy, so careless.

And that is a shame. But I know Mary will keep laughing.