I treated my sister to a kayak rental at Sea Rim State Park. I told her I had seven minutes’ experience in a kayak, so that made me the “expert” and I’d sit in the back.
I couldn’t see her face as we tried to synchronize our rowing. But I could hear various emotions in her attitude as we awkwardly mounted, quickly got wedged in the grass and got advice from a rowing couple years our senior.
Eventually we got the hang of it and decided to drift, listen to the Gulf of Mexico and the birds. It was a good morning. Our hour nearly up, we turned around and Debbie thought she saw a log. I was thinking it wasn’t a log. I hadn’t mention the papers I’d signed promising we would not horseplay in the kayak (no chance of that) and would not feed or tease the gators.
I don’t know which one of us determined or admitted the log ahead was a gator, but we remained calm, reminding ourselves it was his home. He went under and we quietly slipped by, already imagining the stories we’d tell, after we managed to roll out of the kayak. That was not an attractive dismount, but we certainly got our $15 worth.
“Dangerous When Wet”
What’s more fascinating than reading a memoir with significant chapters having occurred right down the street from the sofa where you are sitting? How about being related to the author, having interacted with the real-life characters and then hearing a live reading in the “voices” you remember?
It was something else to attend the packed-house reading of Jamie Brickhouse’s “Dangerous When Wet,” a memoir about coming out, alcoholism and his glamorous mom’s health decline. Cousin Jamie’s outlook somehow conquers some rough times through humor and can make us all laugh as he shares his stories. Especially those about his Mama Jean, her Texas hair and her excursions to New York.
I pretty much interacted with Jamie briefly at family Christmas parties over the years. Even as a kid, I knew this insightful, witty youth was going places. A room full of “fans” he went to school with packed the reading at Art Museum of Southeast Texas and I could tell they felt the same away about Jamie.
darraghcastillo@icloud.com