Page 25 of Big Island Sunrise
“How do you know?”
“She has her own secret spot.”
Her phone dinged with a text and she picked it up, expecting something from one of her sisters. They both checked in daily, outwardly cheerful but really just terrified about how she was faring out in the middle of the ocean when she had barely been functioning at home.
Instead, she found a text from Lani:What are you up to today?
No plans, Emma replied.Other than a grocery run, we haven’t even left the neighborhood since we got here last week.
Up for a beach day? I know a great spot for the kids with no crowds. But I need a ride.
A beach day sounds great. Drop me a pin.
She picked up Kai’s breakfast plate and put it in the sink.
“Can I watch YouTube?” he asked.
“Not right now, hon. We’re going to get ready for the beach.”
His little face pulled into a frown. “I don’t want to go to the beach.”
“We’re going to pick up Auntie Lani and your cousin Rory, remember them? They’re going to show us a new–”
“I don’t want to go to the stupid beach!” he shouted.
Emma stilled. This had been their pattern back in California, ever since losing Adam. Any time she tried to get Kai out the door, he would lose it. Sometimes she would lose it right back. Mostly, though, she just wilted and gave in. Getting him over whatever inner hurdle was causing those overblown reactions took more energy than she had.
Not today.
She moved closer and got down to his level. “Our cousins don’t have a car yet, and they asked for a ride. Going to the beach is really good for our bodies, including our hearts and our brains. And I already told them that we would go. Would you please put your bathing suit on?”
He crossed his arms. “Can I watch YouTube after?”
ANorose in her throat, but she gritted her teeth against it. There was a bright flash of childhood memory, her mother screaming at them on a sunny summer day.
“I’m going to throw that TV through the f-ing wall!”
She took a deep breath.
“Sure. We can watch for half an hour when we get home.”
“Two hours,” he countered.
Emma bit back a laugh. “Zero hours.”
“Fine,” he said in a long-suffering tone. “Half an hour.”
“Bathing suit.”
He walked away, dragging his feet. Emma’s shoulders fell in relief. Meltdown averted.
Multiple times a day, she wondered if they should just go cold turkey on the screens. But back in the before times, screens had only added to their lives. They used to use games and videos as jumping off points for their homeschool lessons. An episode on moles led to a stack of library books on those underground explorers. When he was obsessed withNumber Blocksat age five, Emma had made paper dolls of each number-based character and Kai would stack them on top of each other at the kitchen table.
“Seven plus three equals ten!”
That show had even taught him square numbers, a concept that he mimicked and explored with blocks on the floor:“The square root of sixteen is four!”Things that she never would have thought to introduce so early, rendered easy and fun through cartoons and songs.
Screens weren’t inherently bad. And yanking his primary coping mechanism out from under him all at once wasn’t the answer either.
