Five minutes after our plane left the runway, the woman who had told my eighty-six-year-old grandmother that people her age shouldn’t be traveling glanced down at her phone—and turned crimson.
Her screen was suddenly flooded with comments.
Give the grandmother her seat.
Did she really just say that?
Someone in row 18, please help her.
The woman read each message, her horror growing with every one. Then she looked at my grandmother, at the raised armrest separating them, and finally back at her phone.
She had no idea that her entire argument had been livestreamed to thousands of people.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
PART ONE: THE OCEAN ON A POSTCARD
My grandmother Rose had never seen the ocean with her own eyes. She had only experienced it through movies, photographs, and postcards friends brought back from their vacations.
Whenever anyone asked if she had ever visited the coast, she always gave the same small shrug.
“One day,” she would say.
But one day kept becoming another until she reached eighty-six.
Rose had spent thirty-nine years working at the Henderson Public Library, raised three children, cared for my grandfather during his final illness, and devoted more than a decade to helping me become the person I am today. She always saved the best piece of chicken for someone else and used every extra dollar on her family.
So I decided to give her the ocean.
I began saving in January. I worked weekdays at a dental office and took Saturday shifts at a bakery, setting aside a little money each week in an envelope labeled Florida.
By spring, I had enough for two plane tickets, a simple hotel near St. Augustine, and three days of meals if we watched our spending.
I printed the confirmation and slipped it inside a birthday card.
When Grandma opened it, she stared at the confirmation as though she had forgotten how to read.
“Jacksonville,” she whispered. “Florida.”
“We’ll drive to St. Augustine and stay near the beach.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“You mean I’m actually going to see the ocean?”
“You are.”
She rose so quickly that I had to grab her elbow.
“I’m going to see the ocean,” she repeated, laughing through her tears. “After all these years.”
That evening, she brought out a small notebook and wrote a list titled Things to Do in Florida.
See the ocean.
Put my feet in the water.
Eat a key lime pie.
Buy Anna something she doesn’t need.
I crossed out number four.
