I know I shouldn’t think of Jay’s dog when my eight-year-old plays on the beach, but I do.
Jay was our neighbor when I was a kid, and his family took their dog to the beach one weekend. It went swimming, which seemed harmless and cute, but then the poor thing got disoriented and started swimming out toward the horizon. Jay called my mom in hysterics, but the Coast Guard saved the pup. My mom had to feed it during Jay’s next vacation.
But yeah, that was a dog; this is a second-grader. I know there’s a difference, and that my little girl doesn’t love swimming after the whole pool party thing last year. Still, I worry. What if she decides to pet a dolphin? Kids love dolphins. I could see that kid swimming after a dolphin.
So I watch. It’s maybe a hundred feet to the beach. I can close it in twenty seconds if the horizon ever calls to her like it did to Jay’s dog.
Although I watch out of sheer anxiety, I’ll confess there’s something relaxing about watching her. It’s just her and the tide, but she’s in conversation with about fifty different crustaceans and seemingly teaching them how to dance. During one stretch, I catch her rolling around using kelp as either a blanket or a wig. The property owners aren’t gonna love the sand she drags in, but it’s their fault, really. Should’ve put an anti-frolicking clause in the contract.
With any luck, whatever she’s doing now will knock off some of that sand. My eyes aren’t strong enough anymore to make everything out, but she’s grabbing things off the beach and hurling them into the ocean. Might be shells, might be bulbs of kelp; I can’t be too sure. I do see her throwing form, and I’m pleased that she’s using the crow hop we worked on rather than going underhand. She’s not big enough to pitch, and I prefer her head far away from whirring line drives if she plays up a level next spring.
After a productive hour—for her, not me—Mosey comes bounding up the little hill to the porch. She starts to open the screen door, but I hear gristle under every step, so I intercept and guide her over to the Adirondack loveseat that faces the surf. She’s bouncing up and down, which is good for clearing sand but not for understanding an eight-year-old already allergic to punctuation. Piloting her onto the chair, I start batting at the sand plastered to her shoulders, but her hair gets in the way. Trying to clear that, I discover—of course—more sand.
“And why were we sleeping on the sand?”
She gives me a repugnant look, like I’ve just suggested we adopt an all-celery diet.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
I wait for her to elaborate and answer my question, but I suppose her reason is so self-evident she misses my question mark.
Still pawing at her hair—can you squeeze out sand?—I inquire again.
“What were you doing then, Mosey?”
She grins. “Looking at the stars.”
I raise an eyebrow. “It’s 9:33 am, honey.” Glancing upward, I cluck my tongue. “And it’s cloudy.”
She rolls her eyes. Thanks for teaching her that, Disney Plus.
“I used my imagination. Silly.”
How silly of me, indeed.
“Ah, okay. Well, what constellations did you see?”
“None. It was too cloudy.”
She wiggles free of my fingers combing her scalp to shake her whole body like a wet dog. (Maybe this is why I think of Jay’s?) But no complaints—I hear sand falling onto the wooden slats. I appreciate gravity’s assist.
“Cloudy it—”
“Oh! Daddy! Daddy? Guess what. Guess what happened then!” She pivots into a kneel and leans with both hands on my left thigh. I can tell immediately I haven’t trimmed her nails recently enough, but her eyes are so wide that I’d bleed out from the scratches before interrupting this new thought.
“What?”
“No! Guess what! Guess what I did down there!”
“Uh…” I try to think of something clever. “Did you meet a benevolent pirate searching for buried treasure?”
“No.”
“Did you find a jellyfish and introduce it to a peanut butter fish?”
“N—wait, are there really any peanut butter fish?”
“No, I’m just playing. Tell me what, Mosey.”
There’s a moment where she’s squinting through me, no doubt deciding whether the peanut butter fish would be smooth or chunky, but then she remembers the yet-unshared original what.
“I helped some starfish!” Her jaw drops a little after she says it, like she’s in awe that she got to be the subject of that sentence.
“Really?” I match her expression, but not in some animated way. My jaw drops a little, too. I’m not condescending; I’m genuinely awed by the little creature sitting next to me. “What happened?”
She leans back in the chair and pulls her thin legs into her chest. Gazing out at the beach, she releases this gentle little sigh.
“So,” she says, but then she pauses and shoots a look at me. “This is gonna be a story. Do you have time for a story?”
“I always have time for a story if you’re telling it.” I give a little nod. “Lunch can wait. Tell me about this starfish.”
Mosey takes a huge breath like she’s about to run a race.
“So I was laying on the sand and trying to see the stars, but I couldn’t because there was some seaweed there, so I grabbed it to make a sleeping bag—”
“Sensible,” I add.
“—but then I saw this little orangy pink thing kinda wriggling around.”
“Where was it?”
She points to the beach. “Right there,” she says, “and it was really close to me, so I crawled over to look, and it was a starfish, but it was all dry and sandy and scared.”
“How did you know it was scared?”
She wrinkles her nose.
“I mean, I didn’t know it was scared ‘cause starfish don’t talk, but it wasn’t moving much, and starfish don’t live on the beach because they need water because they live in the water.”
“That’s true.”
“Yeah.” She nods but never takes her eyes off the beach. “It is. So I picked it up, but I was really careful because I didn’t want to hurt it.”
“How did it feel? In your hand?”
She moves her left thumb over to her right and gently probes around.
“It was bumpy on top and squishy underneath. It was also really really really dry.”
“Dry’s not good. For a starfish.”
This snaps her attention back to me. She looks up. “I know. That’s why I carried it out until the waves hit my toes and threw it back into the water.”
“You didn’t just drop it?”
“No! Then it would just get pulled back up on the sand. I threw it really far.”
“Did you crow hop?”
“Yeah!”
“Did it help?”
She nods, vigorously. “It went so far I think I got it all the way back to the reefs.”
“That’s really good.”
“But daddy, that’s not even the best part.”
“It’s not? Then what is?”
For this, she sits up and bites her lip. It’s like she’s afraid she’s going to let out the best part before she’s ready. Rocking back and forth, I hear the Adirondack seat creak.
“C’mon, kid. Don’t leave me hanging like this.”
Finally, she opens her mouth and speaks.
“I found three more starfish after that.”
“Whoa!”
“Yeah!” She’s nodding enough that I can hear grains of sand flying free. “I helped them, too.”
“That is impressive, kid. Great work!”
She doesn’t say thank you because she’s too busy beaming. She never responds to compliments, but I can see on her face that mine landed. There’s this softness that appears, like a shaky planet’s gone steady under her feet. I love that look.
“You know,” I say, staring wistfully out to sea and hoping she notices, “that was a pretty heroic thing, Mosey. Helping those starfish.”
“It was?”
“It was. What if you hadn’t been there, huh? Those starfish might have dried out. They might have been hurt. You saved them. You saved poor little them.”
There’s a moment where she’s frozen, still processing my words. Just as I’m about to tap her to make sure I haven’t somehow fried her brain, she snaps back and looks at me.
“So I’m like Ironman?”
Shit, did I show her Ironman? Tony’s a player in that first one.
“Kinda,” I say, stifling a nervous laugh. “You kinda are to those starfish. Right?”
Her eyes sparkle. People always say that about kids, and they’re obviously right. I lift up my arm and she scooches over until she’s underneath it. I brush more sand off her shoulder as she nestles in against my side.
We stay there in the Adirondack for a while, the surf and the occasional passing car our only soundtrack. I would stay there all day, if she did. Eventually, though, Mosey speaks.
“I’m hungry,” she says quietly into me. I feel the vibrations of her words in my ribcage.
“Me too,” I reply, patting her head. “You want a grilled cheese?”
She nods without pulling her head away.
“I want a grilled cheese with pickles,” she says, muffled, before pulling away so she can look up at me. “And then I’m gonna Ironman some more starfish.”
“You don’t have Tony Stark’s suit, so we’ll put sunscreen on you first. But then yes: rescue away, little hero.”
Her eyes gaze out at the shoreline in front of us.
“Good.” She hops up and walks inside.
“Yes,” I whisper to the ocean air. “You are.”
*****
Fully aware of my Mosey’s preoccupation with the shoreline, I spend more time baking than laser-trained on her after lunch. She’s scouring the beach, combing through sand for citizens in need of saving. The water’s where the starfish are safe; she’s too civic minded to disturb them. Still, I do keep tabs on her, my heart rate directly proportional to the elapsed interval since my last peek.
The late morning sees the clouds part, opening up the sky so the sun spotlights the beach like an idyllic stage. Mosey’s one-woman show becomes a two-hander as the theatre warms; that is, another little girl appears. She and Mosey talk, and I assume they’re about to play. They sit down in the sand—yes, I throw up my hands, but I’m also laughing…a little—and lean down to watch something on what must be a phone.
“So much for that screen break,” I mutter at the cookie dough. But I’m not mad. Maybe she’s found a friend. Maybe they’ll save starfish together. Ironman and War Machine.
It’s maybe ten minutes later, and I’ve just put the dough in the refrigerator to chill when I hear small feet stomp clumsily onto the deck. As the screen door creaks open, I turn around to greet her with a smile only to see my favorite chin quivering.
The sight of her about to collapse inward crushes my heart in a way I’ll never get used to. Tears outrun the impending wails, racing furiously toward the rug to make mud with the trailed-in sand, but I’m diving to grab her without any regard for our security deposit.
The moment I reach her she crumbles into me, and the sobs start. She does this thing when she cries where she hides her face in my stomach; she’s a cartoon ostrich “escaping” harm. Her camouflage is no more effective, though: smothering her slobbery anguish-hiccups against me creates these muffled groans that are equally loud as violent for my heart.
“What’s wrong, Mosey?” I ask, swallowing down my automatic tearful response. “What happened?”
She turns her head and starts talking, but all I get is mucus. After hearing a word that could have been quail, pail, or email, I lift her up—back be damned—and carry her over to the living room sofa. I lay her down with as much care as one can a gasping ball of disconsolate snot, and pull over the ottoman to sit next to her. I try to wipe away some of her tears, but she only bawls more loudly and grabs my arm like it’s a life preserver shaped like her favorite plushie.
After her breathing slows to only a few viscous sniffles per minute, I crane my neck and lean down until our eyes are parallel. When I sniffle inward myself, she opens one eye and then another.
“Are you hurt, honey? Do you need a bandaid?” Probably should have asked that before putting her on a cream-colored sectional, but here we are.
She snorts inwardly with sufficient force to Kirby a pillow and then grunts. But she shakes her head. I breathe a little bit easier from there.
“Okay. That’s good. Are you ready to talk about why you’re sad?”
Her eyes dart away then back to mine. A new tear sprouts in her left, balling into a droplet that lands with a tiny splash against the pleather. She doesn’t speak.
“No rush, kiddo.” I use my free arm to brush matted hair out of her eyes. “I’m on-call for you 24-7.”
We sit there like that for a few minutes more, until Mosey tugs on my arm and pulls me over to the couch. I hate couches; they destroy what’s left of my lower back with an assassin‘s precision. But it’s funny how I only think of that cost later.
At first, she clings to me even harder, wiping her nose up and down on what had minutes earlier been my favorite shirt, but then things steady. Her arms still wrapped around my left, she adjusts until she’s leaning against me. She says nothing, but I know my role now.
“Are you ready to tell me about it now?” I let the corners of my mouth offer glimmers of a smile, a hopeful light at the end of her wallowing tunnel. It works: she takes a deep gulp of air and then throws her shoulders down with a Herculean sigh.
“You can start any time, honey.” I squeeze her shoulder for support. “Any time.”
“It happened when I was playing with Meggy.”
“Maggie?”
“No. Meggy.”
“Ah. That was the little girl out there?”
Mosey nods. It’s a quick, furtive gesture, like she doesn’t want it on the record.
“Okay: Meggy. So you were playing with Meggy and…”
“We were walking on the beach and I found a starfish that was stuck, so I picked it up and told Meggy about them needing water and how we were Ironman, and I threw the starfish into the ocean like before, but then…but then…”
The ellipses send her shoulders heaving again, and soon the tears are back. But it’s a shorter burst this time. Her cheeks rehydrate, but she’s back with me quickly.
“What happened then, Mosey?” My voice is soft. “What happened with Meggy?”
After a series of sniffles, she answers.
“Meggy said ‘Who cares about stupid starfish?’”
“Oh?” It’s genuine surprise from me, too. What demon spawn hates starfish? “Why did she say that, honey?”
“Because…Juanita Verde.” She spits the last words out like cilantro, her chin entering quiver mode with the final phoneme.
I register the words, but they don’t make sense.
“Juanita Verde? Mosey, what’s that?” I lean into her a bit, nudging her with my elbow. “I’m sorry, hon. I don’t understand.”
“Juanita Verde’s a girl. And she’s saving a baby whale.”
“A whale?”
“A baby whale.”
“What? How?”
Mosey frowns, an adorable look on every kid’s face but my own’s.
“Look on your phone,” she says, in full pout mode. “Go to YouTube.”
Far be it from me to argue. Twisting around my daughter’s inert frame, I fish out my iPhone, open the app, and offer it to her. But she does nothing, her angry eyebrows burning every grilled cheese calorie to maintain her fury.
“Type in Juanitaverde.“
I type in Juanita Verde, but I feel her shaking her head.
“It’s one word, daddy.”
“I’m sure it is,” I say, ashamed of my absent telepathy. I fix my error, send my request, and click on the first channel that pops up. “What do I click—”
I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t need to: right there at the top, above dozens of other videos about the ocean and ecology, is an ongoing live stream. Titled UNBEACHING MOOMOO, I click on the video and rotate my phone so Mosey and I can watch.
It takes a second for me to grasp the scene. The camera is stationary and pointed at what looks like a bulging, ashen cucumber. But there are people running around the gray vegetable with buckets, dousing it with what must be seawater. The resolution keeps dropping, so it’s all pretty grainy, but when the signal gets strong, I can just make out what are large flippers and a massive tail. I’m no cetologist, but I’ve seen Star Trek IV. That’s a juvenile humpback whale right there.
I glance at the little girl under my arm and see her sending death stares at the screen. I’m confused; does she think they’re hurting the whale?
“Mosey, they’re helping the whale,” I say, gently. “These people want to get it back in the water.”
“I know.” The words come out angry, though, so I’m perplexed.
“Then why—”
It’s then that someone steps into the frame. I’m a terrible judge of age, but she’s probably seventeen or eighteen, maybe twenty tops. She’s stout but muscular, with an incredible mop of curly hair pulled up into a haphazard bun, and her eyes, framed by thick-rimmed reading glasses, look huge beneath her tall forehead. Although she’s video game-binge pale, her cheeks are red, no doubt flushed from a developing sunburn under a sky that didn’t remain cloudy. As Mosey and I look on, the woman takes a microphone from someone out of frame and steps into the side of the shot.
“Right here?” she asks the camera’s unseen operator. The picture wobbles slightly with a digital nod. “Okay, we’ve gotta go quick.”
After another peek over her shoulder, the girl speaks.
“Hey team. It’s JV. Moomoo’s doing alright, but the Coast Guard says they’ve spotted his mom, so we’re worried she might venture over to help, and we don’t want that. Your donations have been huge—we’ve got a crane on the way, and Dr. Eiseley found a helicopter to get over here to advise. If Moomoo’s mom swims our way, we might have a problem, but I’m thinking he’ll be back in the water within the next few hours. Thanks to everyone for sending in money to accelerate things, and thanks to everybody down here for hustling to help keep him hy—”
Juanita Verde stops short and looks over her shoulder. Moomoo’s writhing around a little bit, so our host drops her mic and breaks into a sprint. Given a moment, I glance down at Mosey, expecting concern, but she’s still almost snarling.
“Honey, Moomoo’s gonna be okay! Juanita Verde has this under control, I think. The baby whale’s gonna be okay because of her.”
“I know,” she hisses. “I hate Juanita Verde.”
Confusion can’t help but seize my eyes. “What? Why?” I ask. “That girl’s incredible! She’s so poised. And in control. Look at her directing those other people, honey. Those are adults, Mosey, and they’re doing everything she says! She’s—”
“She’s Ironman.”
I stop talking, stunned by her words.
“She’s Ironman, and I’m fucking Hawkeye.”
“Whoa, whoa whoa. Mosey, my darling, that’s not the best word—”
“But it’s true! I’m Hawkeye and she’s the real superhero! I’m throwing starfish while Juanita Verde’s saving a fucking whale.”
“What’s wrong with that, though?” I ask her, ignoring further evidence of my careless parenting. “Don’t you want Moomoo back with his mother?”
“Of course I do!” Tears stream down her face again, pooling against my shirt. “But I wanna be a superhero. I wanna help and do something really good.” There’s another epic sniffle. “Starfish are nothing compared to Juanita Verde’s whale.”
Mosey squeezes my arm like she’s a blood pressure cuff with fingernails. I try to catch her eye, but she evades me, wearing the same look of shame as when she ate all the Oreos.
“Ah.” I squeeze her a little tighter to me. “You’re jealous of Juanita Verde.”
“No!” She squirms around trying to resettle, but then pauses. “Well, what does jealous mean again?”
I tap lightly on her knee with the same fingers she’s cutting off circulation to.
“Oh, you know. Jealous. Like…you want what someone else has. Like you wish you had something that belongs to somebody else.”
She sucks her lips inward and squints. Her thinking face. After a few moments, the express dissipates.
“Then I’m not jealous, daddy,” she says with surprising confidence.
“Oh. You’re not?”
“No.” And it’s a definitive no. “I don’t want what she has because I don’t want any baby whales to be hurt.”
“Well, that’s good, Mosey,” I say. “That’s really good. But then why are you so angry?”
“Because Juanita Verde made saving starfish seem stupid.”
“It isn’t stupid to the starfish, honey.” I glance down at the phone. “And I think you might be blaming Juanita Verde for something that’s inside you, my love.”
“But I wanna save the whale. Whales are like people. Remember Tulkun in Avatar 2?”
“Not by name, but sure, I do. He was a good whale.”
“And Free Willy?”
“Willy was top notch as whale.”
“There aren’t any movies about starfish.”
I weigh this and consider mentioning The Suicide Squad, but with two f-bombs under our belt already today, I hold my tongue. Instead, I rub her shoulder and peek down at my phone. Juanita Verde’s still hustling around the whale, alternately barking out barely audible orders and talking into a small phone of her own. When she points to someone in the distance, I squint automatically, and it’s then I do a double take. There’s a sushi restaurant with a bright red roof next to a small hotel with a turtle mural on the side. The pier behind them is familiar, too—I’d recognize the purple posts anywhere. I know where Juanita Verde is: she and Moomoo the whale are less than a mile away.
“Honey? Did Meggy say where Juani…where the baby whale is? Do you know where all this is happening?”
Mosey shakes her head, but she catches a whiff of my excitement because she sits up.
“Well, I do,” I say, my face breaking into a smile. “Would you like to go see the baby whale?”
“What? How?”
I nod toward the bedrooms.
“Go change your clothes while I put on some sunscreen. Why don’t you and I go for a walk?”
At first, she looks at me like I’m joking, but then she wipes at her own eyes with a lurching urgency. Flopping off the couch, she bounces up and bounds into the hallway.
“Hurry, daddy! I wanna see Moomoo swim away!”
“Will do, kid.”
I waddle over to the entry way and pluck the tube of sunscreen out of its bag. Popping it open and squirting it on my arm, I gaze out the window at the sea.
We’ll take the beach, I decide. Maybe we’ll find a starfish along the way.
*****
Normally, it’s me pulling Mosey along on walks. Every dandelion, souvenir shop, and fire hydrant fascinates her; she really is doggish in that way. But as we trudge through sand toward a beached baby whale, it’s the eight-year-old dragging lumbering me.
Blame the couch. My back’s killing me now. But I’ll manage.
It takes us eight minutes to reach the sheer rock face obscuring the shore in question, and I’m nervous until we’re there that maybe I was mistaken about the geography. Sushi and hotels aren’t exactly surprises in a beach town. But I can exhale when we round the bend and come upon a familiar scene in much greater resolution than the rental property’s WiFi allowed.
Although she’d been pulling me moments before, when Moomoo and several dozen people around him appear in frame, Mosey tenses up. Our paces sync—thank you, my L4 and L5 squeak—but then her tiny steps become so hesitant she’s merely kicking sand into my socks. I feel her shoulder bumping against my hip. I squeeze her hand and tug her along.
Breathing in salty ocean air has a calming effect on me, but the scene before us undercuts the baseline tranquility. The strapping team at work has an assembly line going, filling, passing, and dumping buckets on the fifteen-foot gourd trapped on land. As Mosey and I settle into a spot well left of a large tripod and discarded mic I suspect we know the use for, I watch her eyes follow the movement of the crew with apprehension.
“Daddy?” She tightens her grip on my hand. “Why aren’t they putting water on Moomoo’s head?“
“Hmm.” She’s an observant kid; I hadn’t noticed that. But looking on, I spot another pair laying damp white towels near the front of the whale.
“I think it’s because of his blowhole.”
“Whaddya mean?” She stands on her tip toes trying to enhance her angle.
“Well, I might be wrong, but whales are mammals, so they breathe through lungs like us. They need to stay wet, but if water gets into the blowhole, it’s like they’re snorting in liquid.“
“That isn’t fun.”
I cluck my tongue. “It is not. But see those three people right there? With the towels?” I lean toward her and point. She follows my finger.
“What are they doing?”
“I think those are wet cloths. If they use those, he’ll never choke on the seawater.”
“Yep. That’s basically it.”
The voice comes out of nowhere from a spot close by but behind us. Mosey and I turn around in unison and locate its source. It’s not hard: she’s staring at us both from two feet away. I have no idea how long she was listening, but I’m instantly speechless.
Unlike Mosey.
“Juanita Verde.” She spat those five syllables a half hour ago, but they glow now. It’s Bennie the Jet meeting Babe Ruth, a potent blend of surprise, fear, and awe.
“Good morning.” Juanita Verde says with a quick smile. There’s a steady lightness to the greeting like she’s calibrated it perfectly.
The first thing that hits me is how off I was on her age. Juanita Verde isn’t twenty: she’s probably sixteen, but if you told me she was fourteen or fifteen, I’d wouldn’t argue. Her face is redder than the screen showed, perhaps from the stress of the last few hours more than the sun, but it’s young in a way her commanding video presence obscured. Her features are soft and innocent, like Mosey’s, and her sturdy build suggests underlying strength. True, the glasses separate her from my daughter, as does the massive mop of hair tied above her head, but there’s enough similarity between them that a wave of panic hits. Might I have clicked the fast-forward button Adam Sandler-style while reaching for the Banana Boat?
Juanita Verde keeps her smile trained on Mosey while her eyes probe the scene behind us. When those eyes narrow suddenly toward the whale’s tail, I reposition to follow them automatically.
“We’re too close to his tail!” she calls out. “The buffer’s for you, not him!”
“I’ve got ‘em.” A man with a beard and wrap-around sunglasses calls back. “Eat your lunch!”
“Who’s that?” Mosey asks, her voice barely audible over the squawking seagulls on the pier.
Juanita Verde pops in a french fry, then chews and swallows.
“My brother,” she says. “He made me take a break to eat.”
“What are you eating?”
Juanita Verde points to a brown bag covered with grease. “Someone got me this from a burger place. It’s just fries left; I wolfed down the grilled cheese.”
“You like grilled cheese?” Flecks of disbelief color her voice.
“I love grilled cheese. I’m a vegetarian so it’s the closest I can get to a greasy burger.”
“I eat my grilled cheese with pickles.”
Juanita Verde weighs this and shrugs.
“Might be tasty. I’ll have to try that.”
When her eyes return to the whale calf, again, so do ours. With someone like her present, you follow their lead. We must not be alone in that: what seemed like a hectic scene when we arrived strikes me as controlled now. Nobody’s yelling, everyone’s set in their job—there’s even laughter around Moomoo as taller, older humans pass and pat.
“Everyone seems calm,” I say, rediscovering my voice. “Is help close?”
Juanita Verde darts her eyes to me like my presence is momentarily a surprise. But she nods with practiced poise a nanosecond later.
“I don’t wanna jinx anything, but yeah, I think so.” Juanita Verde fishes another fry from the bag. “Dr. Eiseley is fifteen minutes away, and the rescue team will be here within the hour. And Moomoo’s mom hasn’t made any moves inland. I think he’s gonna be alright.”
“That’s good,” I say. “Really good.”
“Yep. Timing worked out on this one.”
“Miss Verde?” Mosey’s voice comes out cautious, like she just remembered she’s supposed to be intimidated.
Juanita Verde snorts and then looks down at her.
“Hey hey hey, don’t call me that!” She shifts the bag to her left hand, wipes off her right, and then reaches it out as a fist. “Call me Juani.”
Mosey’s eyes go wide. An adult—well, in performance—inviting a first name? And a fist bump? It’s an eight-year-old’s greatest honor.
“Hi…Juani.” She grins when she says it.
“What’s your name?”
“I go by Mosey.”
“Very nice to meet you, Mosey.”
I’m impressed by the sincerity in everything Juanita says. Stumbling into condescension is so easy talking to a kid Mosey’s age, but the girl’s tone never so much as grazes patronizing. Maybe it’s because she’s talking to a little girl? Hard as it is to believe, it couldn’t have been long ago that she was one, too.
There’s a lull right then. Second graders aren’t skilled at sustaining dialogue, after all. But I can help.
“Mosey,” I say, putting my hand on her shoulder, “found your stream this morning. We wanted to make sure Moomoo was okay.”
“I wanted to help,” Mosey says with a nod, emboldened. “If I could.”
Juanita licks her lips and then peeks at the whale. She scans from tip to tail and raises an eyebrow.
“You know, I think you actually could. Would you like to help keep Moomoo’s head cool? You’ll have to be really careful around his eyes, though. Could you handle doing that with some towels?”
Mosey’s eyes open so big I’m prepared to scoop them off the sand when they fall out.
“I’ll be so careful, Juani! I’ll do whatever you tell me to!” She’s found a miniature pogo stick: she’s so elated she’s bouncing.
Juanita chuckles and adjusts her glasses. She nods my way.
“Is that okay with you?”
I don’t even get a chance to affirm before Mosey’s tugging on my arm, lobbying.
“Oh, please daddy? Please let me go with Juani to help the whale? Please please—”
“Of course you can go. But you have to listen to everything Juanita says, okay? No freelancing.”
“I won’t!” She turns to Juanita. “Oh my god, can we go now?”
Juanita laughs and offers her hand.
“Let’s do this!” she says to Mosey. And then to me: “We’ll be right back.”
I watch as the two dash off toward the whale in sudden buzzing conversation. There’s no way Juanita catches a word of that girl’s run-on racing thoughts, but she sells it like she does. When they reach Moomoo, Juanita introduces Mosey to someone and then shows her how to pat the thick skin. Against a fifteen-foot whale, my Mosey looks so small, and she can’t be helping much in her one tiny square of blubber, but she focuses like she’s saving the planet. Her two-handed towel work is gentle; her eyes don’t wander from her one spot.
To my surprise, Juanita returns to where I am.
“Arón’s got her. They want me resting here until the doc arrives,” she says with a hint of frustration. “Is it okay I left her? I expected to slip back in while showing her the ropes.”
Without taking my eyes off of Mosey, I nod.
“It’s great. If you think it’s safe, I’m not worried. Considering I’ve known you exist for all of an hour, I somehow trust you implicitly.”
“Aww.”
“You have that way with people, don’t you?” I look at Juanita, but her eyes remain fixed on the whale.
“I guess.” There’s an unexpected bashfulness there now. It’s the first time she’s sounded like a teenager. “Honestly, it still scares me when I think about it. And I think about it all the time.”
“How did you get started with work like this then?” I ask, back to watching my daughter. “You don’t have to answer, by the way. I know you’ve got thoughts whirring around. I won’t be offended.”
Juanita lets out a gentle mhmm.
“You know, it doesn’t even really make sense.”
“How do you mean?”
She frowns, but I suspect that’s simply how she ponders.
“Arón and I were just writing stories and making silly videos to post online, and then, I swear, nothing changed except people started watching them. When I was younger, all I wanted was to make stories, but now I’m doing…stuff like this.”
“It’s damned impressive. You can see how much these people listen to you. And trust you.” I smile as Mosey dabs at what I can only call Moomoo’s cheek. “I get it.”
Juanita’s expression is distant.
“I’m telling you: it was an accident. I never wanted to be Juanita Verde. I was okay just being Juani. It’s so weird that now I’m impressive. The attention still weirds me out, but I’m trying to be helpful.”
A dry laugh escapes my throat, and it breaks Juanita’s focus. She looks at me.
“What?”
“Oh, no, it’s not what you said. It’s just that your being helpful had that little girl in tears earlier.” I gesture toward the side of my shirt. “This child snot was over Juanita Verde.”
“What? What did I do wrong?”
I catch panic in her voice; it reminds me how young she is. Hers is an earnest panic, one that I recognize from Mosey when she thinks she’s in trouble.
“Oh, geez! Nothing! You did nothing wrong. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just,” I exercise greater care with my next words. “Seeing your work here made my Mosey feel a tad small in what she was doing.”
Juanita bites her lip. “She was jealous of me?”
“You know, I thought that,” I say with a shrug, “but I don’t think it was envy so much as inadequacy.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, Mosey spent the morning finding starfish on the beach. You know, ones that got washed ashore. She was pretty proud of it, but then a friend told her it was silly because Juanita Verde’s saving a whale. A baby whale.”
Mosey catches us watching her and waves. Juanita and I both return the favor.
“Saving starfish didn’t seem quite so heroic anymore.”
“It was to the starfish,” Juanita says as a reflexive whisper; she’s still lost in some thought.
“I agree. We talked about that.” I sigh. “But it’s a matter of scale, and unfortunately, I’ve given my little girl some sensitivity to that. She felt big at first, like the ocean. But then she felt small, like a tide pool, comparing herself to you. You provided disappointing context for her efforts.”
I swallow back emotion that’s suddenly gripped me.
“Not that that’s your fault or anything. Again, you are incredible. Obviously.”
Juanita holds my eyes for a moment before letting hers drift back to Mosey. She exhales slowly, as though trying to sustain the airflow forever.
“It’s so weird to have this…megaphone. When what you say is amplified, it’s easy to drown out voices that ought to be heard.“ She sighs again. “I’ve tried to use my megaphone thoughtfully. But it’s always strange to be this loud.”
Right then, Arón says something to Mosey, and she hands him her towels. He points to us, and she runs over, kicking up sand until she collides full force into my knees.
“Arón says you can should come back when you’re ready.” She swallows down her excitement at fulfilling her duty. “He says the helicopter should be close.”
Juanita gives a satisfied smile and takes a step toward the whale, but then she seems to think better of it. Turning around, she drops to one knee and looks my daughter in the eye.
“Thank you for helping over there,” she says, that sincerity of hers locked and loaded. “Especially because they wouldn’t let me.”
Suddenly shy, Mosey presses her cheek against my thigh. But she keeps an eye on Juanita.
“I didn’t do very much.”
Juanita scoffs.
“Moomoo’s flippers can’t reach his face, Mosey. The guy’s scared and trapped and worrying about his mom, and you did for him what he couldn’t for himself. That sounds like a lot to me. That was good work. You did good work.”
A small smile freezes on her face only broken by a whisper. “I wish I could help Moomoo more.”
Juanita licks her lips and then sneaks a quick look at me.
“And that’s a really noble wish. I’m impressed that’s what you want.”
The unmistakable beating of helicopter blades rises in the distance. There’s nothing to see yet, but there will be soon.
“I think we’ve got Moomoo in a good place now,” she says, her eyes still holding my daughter’s. “But maybe you can help me a different way?”
“How?” Mosey’s brow rises so high it pulls her onto her tiptoes.
“Well,” Juanita says, “this beach has so many creatures all along it. Did you know that sometimes animals wash up with the tide and can’t get back out to their families and homes? It happens to so many of them! Like—”
“Like starfish?” Mosey’s jaw drops a little.
“Exactly like starfish. When I was little, I used to walk the beach to find the poor starfish and send them back home.” Juanita sighs, lending sufficient drama for me to notice but Mosey to not. “Do you think you could find a starfish or two and save them for me?”
“Yeah! Juani, I was already doing that today!” She’s so shocked that she can’t fathom her new hero could believe her. “Daddy! Daddy! Tell her I was doing it already!”
Suppressing a chuckle, I make of show of nodding. “She was indeed saving starfish today.”
The helicopter’s thrum grows louder. A few of those around us are shielding their eyes and staring off into its direction.
“That’s wonderful,” Juanita says. And though she’s playing this up, I can tell she means it.
At this point, even Juanita can’t ignore the approaching aircraft. Looking up, she spots the descending chopper and smiles.
“I think,” she says, firmly, “that’s my cue.”
She starts to stand up, but Mosey reaches out and grabs her hand. There’s a momentary shock on the teenager’s face, but she wipes it away before looking down.
“Yes, Mosey?”
My daughter wears concern. “How many starfish do I need to save to become like you? Ten? Twenty?”
Without missing a beat, Juanita responds.
“Don’t measure yourself by me. You are who you are to every starfish.” Juanita dons a look of ferocious truth that would make Honest Abe blush. “You’re a hero to them.“
Mosey’s so transfixed that she misses my tears making mudknots in her hair.
“Can I give you a hug before I go?” Juanita asks her.
There’s not even a nod: my daughter releases her remaining hand from me and clasps onto Juanita. Despite the obvious urgency of one’s mission, both look at complete peace.
After the tender moment, someone yells out for Juanita, so she disentangles herself from my eight-year-old. When she’s up to full height, she catches my eye.
“Thank you, Juanita Verde,” I say quietly. “I’ll be sure to like and subscribe when we get back to the house.”
“I didn’t ask. But thank you.” Juanita takes a deep breath and then lowers her voice and points at the little girl back on my leg. “And thank you for that.”
Without one moment’s more notice, Juanita jogs over to meet the man climbing out of the cockpit. There’s such conviction to her gait that it looks like she’s flying.
Or maybe that’s just her cape.
*****
Several hours, starfish, and cookie trays—not to mention one reunited-with-his-mom whale calf—later, Mosey and I have run out of gas. After dinner, we sit down on the Adirondack loveseat to talk out our busy day’s adventures, but Mosey collapses into me while the sun climbs into bed.
I try to coax her back by talking up the vibrant orange and purple colors melding sky with sea, but only groggy groans reply. She can’t tell me from a stuffed Snorlax.
Every few minutes, she adjusts on the chair, and I remain still while she settles in. When she does, her small shoulders rise and fall in gentle oscillation, the rhythm steady and secure. During some stretches, the lapping tide aligns with her lungs, leaving me to appreciate her impossible oneness with our world. When her hair twists across her face, my fingers guide it back, and the brushes of warmth from her cheek and forehead calm me toward nature’s beat as well.
When the sun at last slips under its covers, darkness reigns, but there’s enough moonlight to just barely see our small stretch of beach. Teeming with life while she frolicked around it hours earlier, the shoreline has joined Mosey in slumber.
I’m puzzling out how to move an inert child into her bed without rupturing a disc when movement on the beach catches my eye. The visibility weakens by the minute, the earth threatening to render the ocean an audio-only affair, but I can barely make out two shapes: one tall, one not.
Without disturbing Mosey, I lean forward slightly, curiosity lifting me from the Adirondack’s angled back. I squint down at the beach, my eyes focusing and refocusing, struggling to make out what the two walkers are doing. Their pace is languid, their path haphazard—the tall one keeps careening back to redirect the small one who bounds as only a child can. If I surrender to the fuzzy shapes, I can imagine them as Mosey and me years ago, the serene universe gifting me an organic home movie. I run my fingertips back and forth along her arm with the force of a feather all the while.
After a few minutes of stumbling around by the pair down below, I’ve receded like my hairline into a film festival of memories, but a sudden change rips me back to the present. The small one has stopped moving, so the tall one follows suit, but then there’s a tiny burst of aural commotion. I can’t make out bodies, let alone individual fingers, but I could swear from the posture that the small one is pointing at something.
I know I shouldn’t, especially because I can’t be sure, but I can’t resist. I squeeze Mosey’s shoulder and gently shake her.
“Mosey. Honey?”
Without opening her eyes, she grumbles and twists into a cat-like position.
“Wha?”
“Look at the beach, Mosey,” I whisper. “There’s someone down on the beach.”
Reluctantly, she opens her eyes, but it’s a groggy half-hearted effort.
“I don’t see anybody.” The words have gravity, her vowels tumbling down her throat no sooner than they arrive.
“Please, honey. Look.” I point. “Look right there.”
Mosey frowns, but her eyes do open. She follows my finger with wobbly loyalty, and she squints at the black blobs huddled a few feet beyond the surf’s reach.
“I see them,” she says. “But I’m too tired to look.” Her head apparently seven hundred pounds, she flops back against me with a comical oof when she hits.
“I think you wanna see this, kiddo.”
Mosey grumbles, rubbing her face against my left forearm.
“Just tell me,” she says distantly. “Tell me what’s happening and I’ll imagine it.”
I fix my eyes on the spot, but it’s even harder than before to make anything out. If a second-grader can’t see, what hope do I have? Still, I try. The smaller one is bending down…I think? And he's probably got something in his hand now because he’s staring at the tall one. There’s a flourish and then the little one runs out into the water and spasms. The water’s gentle, but it blocks a lot of sound, yet I’d swear a shrill cheer barely punctures the maritime soundscape.
What have I seen? I can’t be sure, but—
“Daddy,” she says from some far off land. “Are you gonna tell me?”
I look down at her and see a tiny delicate creature. She’s in no danger of drying out, but yet, I yearn to rescue her instinctually, proactively, eternally. With a deep breath, I let my words wrap around her bumpy skin.
“There’s a little boy down there. With his mom. And they were walking along the beach. Earlier today, they watched a little girl on the beach saving some starfish and helping them get home.”
“Was that me.” Never one for punctuation, she drifts through the question mark.
“It was, I’m sure.” I slip my arm out from under her and put it around her tiny shoulder. “No one else was out saving starfish today. And so tonight, the boy and his mom walked down to the little girl’s beach to look around. The little boy wanted to save a starfish, too. He wanted to be like the little girl.”
“Did he find one.” She angled her face toward me for a moment, her eyelids threatening to open, but they merely flutter and she crumples into me once more.
“He did. And when he did, he picked it up, and he hurled it into the ocean. Just like you did. And then he cheered because he was so proud for having helped.”
“Don’t let him save all the starfish.” It comes out a whisper, her lips barely moving.
“He won’t. There will always be more starfish, honey. Even if the both of you save them every day. The beach is scary that way. For starfish. But now there are two of you saving them. You’ll help so many more now because there’s more of you. And if some other kid watches him, maybe they’ll also try to help a starfish. The effect will be exponential. Every wayward starfish will have a round trip ticket to safety because of you. It all started with you. Because you, my love, decided to help some starfish.”
Mosey’s awake enough that a small smile finds her lips. But only momentarily.
“Will I be Juanita Verde then.”
I glance out at the beach, but it’s nothing but an endless shadow now. The visitors have already moved along, if they were ever even there.
With Mosey pinned against my side, I pull us out of the Adirondack. With the final tenuous fibers of my lower spine, I lift her up until her head rests on my shoulder. I take a stumbling first step, but then some evolutionary adrenaline kicks in and I steadily carry her into the house.
We enter the hallway when she tries to speak again. Her face scrunched into my neck, I feel her words’ vibrations off her lips, but I can’t make out their meaning. In a few steps, we’re at her mattress, so I carefully peel her off of me and slide her onto the unmade bed. Her legs curl on top of the bedding, so I lift them up to free the only sheet she’ll need under the warm summer air.
Rolling over, she speaks.
“Daddy. Am I Juanita Verde now.”
I kneel down and brush her hair out of her face one more time. There’s so much I want to say, even though I know she won’t remember a word.
“No. You aren’t.” I lean forward and kiss her forehead. “But the starfish don’t need Juanita Verde. The starfish need you.”
I rock back, then lean forward and kiss her once more. “If everyone does their part, we’ll make things better.” It comes out a whisper. “That’s what Juanita Verde wants, too. Big or small or medium-sized, all of us helping out.”
A contented smile settles onto my daughter’s face. She pulls the sheet up until it reaches her nose.
“I’ll help more tomorrow.”
“I know you will.”
“Goodnight, daddy.”
“Goodnight, kiddo,” I whisper while standing up. “I love you.”
She rolls over and mumbles a reply, but the words get lost between her and that sheet. I get the gist, though. Her sleeping smile finds me.
It was mine first, after all.
*****
One careful step after another, I creep toward the bedroom door, determined not to interrupt her again. But right when my left foot eclipses the doorframe, I hear a rustling behind me. I stop and turn around.
“Daddy.”
“Yes, my love?”
Her eyes stay closed, but her smile wavers.
“The boy. On the beach.”
“Yes, Mosey?”
She wrinkles her nose and squirms against the pillow.
“Was he real. Did he really save a starfish or were you just telling a story.”
I stare back at the little girl bathed in blue moonlight. Leaning against the door, looking at her, I say the only thing I can.
“What’s real doesn’t matter, honey. Sometimes a story’s all we get.”
Tears silently pooling in my eyes, I sigh.
“Sometimes the story has to be enough.”
I don’t want to write out an explanation of everything here. No handful of sentences will be sufficient for this piece that synthesizes several huge issues I’ve weighed regularly during the last few years. This might be the smoothest I’ve ever synthesized concepts in one place; I read this as an essay, even though its form varies.
Instead, I’ve recorded an audio reflection about the piece. This includes what it means, who it’s about, where it came from, why I wrote it now, and how it came to have that fifth part at the end. That recording can be found here.
Before I end this, some notes:
Loren Eiseley’s essay “The Star Thrower” has been adapted and adopted by so many, rarely with attribution. I too heard it first from someone else, but the beautiful parable at its center is Eiseley’s. I think about it every day. This is my loving homage.
Juanita’s megaphone speech is taken nearly verbatim from the afterword to John Green’s recent non-fiction release Everything is Tuberculosis. (Those are also Green’s eyes in the artwork.)
The gaps in my beached whale-care knowledge got filled in via this website from Discover Wildlife
Thank you to Michelle for the illustration. I wanted this to have a storybook feel to it (story-wise), and her beautiful textured drawing lends it that little parable touch.
This is the longest piece I’ve ever shared on Substack. I sought feedback about potentially splitting it, but E and C encouraged me to post it in its entirety. The length will return to normal next week. If you did read the story in full, thank you.
Okay so, firstly, great great great piece. Your right, you synthesised some many huge parts together into one cohesive hole. The daughter’s feelings about the YouTuber, the weight the YouTuber feels, the dynamic between the daughter and the father. The last bit about telling stories. There is so much to this that is fantastic! Great writing, great dialogue, great feeling.
But what I have to know, is, do you have a daughter? Like is this a non-fiction story? Because if it is, I’m not really sure why, but I assumed you didn’t have kids. And if you don’t have kids, and you made this whole story up, then that is equally impressive in the sheer imagination and creativity of it. Either way, bravo sir! Great piece. :)