Clint sat cross-legged, a kite balanced against the white shreds crossing the shredded knee of his worn jeans. His close-cropped silver-hair glinted in the sun as his gnarled fingers whittled a stick to replace the kite’s broken crossbar.
“Don’t go to too much trouble,” said the kite’s owner, a red-haired woman. She shuffled from foot to foot, anxious to join friends on the beach. Though not young, she was popular, and sought a date with more sophistication than Clint’s exuberant, childlike nature. Clint worked steadily, unaware of her discomfort.
As the woman called out, “Why don’t I just get that kite later?” and turned to join her friends, Clint handed it to her.
“Good as new!” he crowed.
His blue-gray eyes sparkled like the summer sun on the surf. Though he’d once been a corporate executive, he derived more joy from life after recovering from clinical depression. His illness had helped him gain insight into the important things in life. The naïve joy he expressed at simple acts like fixing a kite may have seemed childish to some of my friends, but I found his nature refreshing.
Later, I smiled as I watched Clint help a group of children look for sand dollars.
When one of the kids found a treasure, Clint patted him on the back and said, “Great job!”
He savored life’s simplest pleasures as if experiencing them for the first time. As he and the kids examined their shells and sand dollars, someone offered ice cream cones. Clint smiled and closed his eyes as he licked the sweet cream. Then he held the cone above his face.
“Here’s a trick,” he said.
He bit the bottom off his cone and sucked out the ice cream. The kids bit the bottoms off their cones and soon the whole group was giggling as they tried to eat ice cream from both ends at once. Several parents scowled at the thought of cleaning sticky ice cream off their children’s clothing, but I laughed. As I licked my own ice cream, Clint’s nature sang in my heart like a nightingale’s tune, reminding me of life’s simple pleasures, easy to forget in the busyness of adulthood.
Later that night, I was struggling with a small campfire. I’d promised to roast marshmallows with my son, Jason, before going to sleep. My husband had taken Jason for a walk and though I wasn’t good at starting fires, I hoped to surprise them. Instead of a crackling fire, I produced a thin flame and a lot of smoke. Fanning the fire with a magazine, I choked and coughed, eyes teary from trying to coax the small flame into life.
“Are you cooking or smoking over there?” someone joked from a nearby campsite.
I took a breath to answer but coughed instead, embarrassed that I was creating unwanted attention.
“Let me help you,” a kind voice said from the edge of my campsite.
Clint stood there, smiling, understanding without asking what I was doing. He pulled a folding knife from his flannel shirt pocket and shredded several dry Douglas fir twigs. He removed the large branches I’d placed on the fire and coaxed the fire to life with the shredded twigs. As he worked his weathered face smiled up to his forehead. He hummed as he added sticks, one at a time. Soon the fire was blazing.
“There you go!” he said.
As he turned to leave, I asked, “Would you like to stay and roast marshmallows?”
“Don’t encourage him,” someone called from a nearby campsite. “He’s like a lost puppy. He’ll never leave.”
I glanced at Clint, wondering if the comment had hurt his feelings. Seeming not to notice, he thanked me and began sharpening sticks for the marshmallows.
“Well, look at you!” Clint cried when my husband, Michael, and Jason walked up. He shook Michael’s hand then squatted and shook Jason’s. “You’re a fine fella!”
