Drunk Mom

It was almost the perfect end to the perfect day—sun setting over the Pacific, warm wind drying my salty hair, the ocean splashing us from under the netting of the Costa Rican catamaran on which we sat in our bathing suits. And then. I heard her before I felt it. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” My sloth-like vacation brain was on, and very, very slowly, I registered a cold sensation on my left shoulder. Then the smell hit me: the sweet aroma of cheap beer. I looked down at the growing puddle of foam gathering at my left hand. 

It was her. The drunk mom. She was standing on the catamaran’s deck above and behind me, from which she dropped her can of Imperial beer. My 8-year-old daughter, H, looked up at me with big, confused eyes. 

“It’s fine,” I muttered, as I grabbed the can and lifted it up toward her, not making eye contact. I was annoyed, but I also felt sorry for her, her husband, and her teenage daughter. 

We were making our way back to Marina Pez Vela in Quepos, Costa Rica. Our day was spent boating to Manuel Antonio Bay, along with about 30 other tourists, where we snorkeled among bright orange and blue fish, lounged in the sun, and ate fresh fish skewers for lunch. Bob Marley pumped out of the speakers, which complimented the frozen juice cocktails being served in the galley. I had quit drinking a year earlier and enjoyed fresh passion fruit juices with H. 

Of all the tours my daughter and I took on this trip (zip-lining, national park, boating), this tour was my favorite. I love nothing more than being on a boat in the Pacific Ocean, salt making my hair unruly, the fishy smells, bare feet, pelicans diving for dinner. I grew up on the Pacific Ocean, in Redondo Beach, surfing, diving, camping in Baja California, and deep sea fishing. These adventures were always accompanied by alcohol, and I partook as much as anyone. Drinking a beer after a dive, a margarita after surfing, a shot to celebrate a big catch, was a given. One did not exist without the other. Especially on a boat.

But on this trip, I did not drink. It was the first time I’d traveled internationally and said no to wine, tequila, beer, whatever. It would have felt awkward had I been with a group of friends who drank, but I was with my child, and abandoning the booze was easy.

In the first fifteen minutes of our catamaran ride, as we pulled out of the marina, the boat’s tour guide called everyone whose birthday it was to the front of the boat. Five reluctant vacationers humored him, and stood in a line in front of the rest of us. Shots were brought out, handed to the birthday five, and the tourists cheered on as they obediently downed the tequila. Those who knew it, chanted the Spanish salutation, “Arriba!! Abajo!! El centro!!! Para el dentro!!” 

H looked up at me. “Mom, they didn’t even ask them if they wanted to drink that,” she noticed. She’s an empath and hard-core rule follower, not that anyone was breaking any rules. 

“You’re right,” I replied. 

“What would you have done if it was your birthday?” she asked me, knowing I don’t drink.

“I would have pretended to take the shot, but instead of drinking it, I would have flung it behind me, into the sea,” I smiled at her. Her face turned thoughtful; she was satisfied with my answer. 

Shots consumed, the birthday five strolled back to their people. The announcer informed us that the bar was open for beer, piña coladas, and other frozen drinks. That was the moment I first noticed Drunk Mom. 

“Why do you do that?” This was uttered by a tall, shirtless, balding man, whose belly indicated a love of beer. He was reprimanding the woman next to him, I assumed it was his wife, who had interrupted her daughter who was talking about the birds. 

“What??!” Drunk Mom slurred back. 

“She was trying to ask something about the birds, and you had to cut her off. You always do that,” he said in obvious annoyance. 

She stared at him with glazed eyes, spun a 180, and walked slowly to the other side of the boat, where she stood in her blue one-piece bathing suit that was speckled with tiny red flowers. 

“Mom!” the daughter shouted after her. “Mom!!” 

I observed this with a sort of sick feeling, registering that that very well could have been me. If I hadn’t quit drinking, would I be Drunk Mom? Fighting with my family? I felt terrible for her and her teenage daughter, who was trying in vain to make her mom feel better.

Throughout the boat tour, I spotted Drunk Mom at the bar, cash in hand. I saw her leaning on the railing, head in her elbow, eyes closed, looking half asleep. I witnessed her missing everything that was good that day.

As I wiped her sticky beer off my shoulder, my annoyance morphed into empathy and then into gratitude. I wasn’t missing anything. My daughter wasn’t missing out either. I watched her as she stood up, walked to the boat’s railing, leaned over, and gazed at the dolphins jumping and racing along the catamaran’s hulls, her hair whipping in the wind.