Page 34 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
It’s a dream. That’s what it is. A dream.
And I never want to wake up.
In the morning, Julia goes to Mother Hubbard’s Homeschool. Mrs. Hubbard runs what is essentially a cottage school. She is a retired elementary school teacher, and she teaches whatever the kids need. The place is licensed and, every once in a while, gets a visit from the licensing agency.
I keep myself busy indoors on those days, while Austin sits in his camp chair and seems to be working on his tablet. I’m pretty sure he is keeping tabs on the entire neighborhood while Authority invades our idyllic world.
I am learning housekeeping — van style. It might seem like there wouldn’t be much. But if your entire home can fit inside a cargo van, keeping up with home chores is essential.
Austin shows me a storage cubby under the passenger seat of the van where I can keep my clothes, wigs, and scarves. My hair has grown out almost to pixie cut length, and Austin keeps it trimmed up for me, so I don’t really need the wigs now. But I sometimes wear them just for fun.
My hair is growing out curly. Who knew? Without the weight of my long hair and the constant coloring and styling, it has sort of developed a mind of its own. When I look in the mirror, it looks as if a blond version of Squeegee has landed on my head.
Dirty people clothes go in a sheltered hamper, just outside the van door. There is a coin-operated wash shack at the end of the residential row. Once or twice a week, we take all our laundry and get it done.
Austin explains to me carefully about separating whites and colors, and about water temperature, bleach, and different fabrics. Most of our stuff is easy-wash, carefree beach wear. But once in a while, we’d go to the Goodwill and would find something fancy.
There is this little push carpet cleaner we use every day in the van, even though the carpeted area is less than three feet wide, and not even five feet long. Austin wipes down the inside of the driving compartment once a week to keep the dust off and shows me how to do the passenger side.
The bathroom gets a daily scrub down with cleaning vinegar, which is different from pickling vinegar. I learn that pickling vinegar is tested to make sure it is food safe, while cleaning vinegar is not. On top of that, cleaning vinegar is a lot stronger. You’d think it would make the van smell like a pickle, but it doesn’t.
The kitchen gets a wipe down with diluted cleaning vinegar, whether we’d used the cooktop and oven or not.
Beds get made up daily. Austin is a real stickler about that. He says nothing makes a space look tackier than an unmade bed. Even Julia, whose bed is in the loft, has to make up her bed every morning. She has two storage boxes — one for her clothes, and one for toys.
I get pretty good at the housekeeping. I don’t really think about whether I like it or not. It gives me something to do while Austin is busy with his work. When he is done, and the van is clean, we go out on his paddle board.
Sometimes, now that I am getting pretty good at paddling, he gives me the inflatable, and he goes out on his rigid board. We almost always wind up over by the little island and have a snack in the shade.
At lunchtime, Julia comes home. We have lunch and then a siesta. Siestas are nice when it is hot outside and the solar panels keep the air conditioner topped up on energy, so it is comfy inside the van.
When things have started to cool off, we take Julia down to the edge of the water. On this particular day, Austin had found a sandcastle kit in the toy bin at the Goodwill, and we are trying it out.
“I want a BIG castle,” Julia says. “It’s gonna have towers, an’ a wall, an’ a moat, an’ a drawbridge.
One of the things Austin had picked up at the Goodwill was a DVD player and a box of used movie disks. We’d watchedPrincess Bridethe previous evening, and we’d found a full set of Gordon Dickson books.
We had been readingThe Dragon and the George, which has many castle references. That is, Austin had read it out loud to Julia, and I’d listened, too.
I’d made one or two sandcastles in my growing up years. Summer camps had been good for stuff like that. And Austin knows his way around how to pile up wet sand, so we get on with the process pretty well. We use milk cartons and old ice cream buckets to shore up the inside, so the wet sand doesn’t just crumble right away.
We make pretty good progress on Julia’s castle. It is nearly as tall as she is, when Austin notices that the tide is coming in and nibbling at the outer wall.
Julia is sad to think that all our work will wash away.
“That’s how life is, baby girl,” Austin tells her. “You work hard on something, then it washes away. Best to enjoy it while we have it, then let it go so you can make a clean break.”
Had that been what he had done with his wife? We’d never talked about her. I’d known she wasn’t part of Julia’s life, and that Austin had sole custody. We’d talked about it when one of her little friends from Mother Hubbard’s had gone to stay with her dad for a couple of weeks.
So, Austin eases the buckets and cartons out of the structure, and bags them up so they won’t be garbage in the sea. Then we watch the tide come in and wash all our fun away. I take pictures with Austin’s tablet so Julia will have something to remember, and so will Austin.
Then we go back to the van. Betty and Bobby come over and ask if Julia can come have supper and sleep over. Mr. Turner is outon the road again, and Mrs. Turner wants the company. So, we give Julia first dibs on the shower.
By the time she is done, the water tank is pretty low. So, Austin says, “Let’s shower together!”
Julia had run off with the twins as soon as she was clean, so why not? I should have thought…
The van shower is tiny. In fact, it is a cubicle or maybe better described as a “tubicle” that contains the dry-flush toilet, a protected compartment for the toilet paper, and a sprayer that could be handheld or attached to the ceiling.
