Surprise

Last night around dinner time me, Bob and the boys all piled in the car. We told Bob to pick the restaurant - after all, it was Father's Day Eve. Bob took great joy in taking his car out for a spin and he banked those corners and after some time, we knew we weren't going to the Salem Beer Works, or the Indian restaurant or the sushi place. As we moved out of familiar territory, the boys gave up guessing where we were going and Dylan started moaning from hunger. When we hit Cape Ann and headed toward Gloucester...they really started wondering what was up. I was clueless too. Bob just smiled and drove.

After much poking around along the waterfront in Gloucester, past the Crow's Nest bar where the guys from The Perfect Storm drank their last drink and past the Gorton's fish factory, we ended up at Rocky Neck, the oldest art colony in America. It says so right on the banner over the road.

Just as we arrived, a parking spot opened up and Bob slipped right in. We strolled up the road, the air smelling of the sea, the sun low on the horizon, the artists all out in front of their galleries chatting, the smells of seafood cooking in the air. In all the years we've lived on the North Shore, I had never been to Rocky Neck. Bob had, but I don't remember him ever talking about it.

We sat at the deck of Mad Fish Grille and the boys had Shirley Temples and Bob and I had a drink and we watched the boats and talked about all kinds of things...The Producers (we had watched the movie that morning), actors we wished would work together, horror movies that we should watch that weren't to scary, boats it would be fun to own, old stories of other times Bob surprised me or us. The food came really late and they were short-staffed, but we didn't care much. Drew even got a free bowl of chowder because he hailed the waiter at one point and sweetly said "Excuse me, but is my seafood platter coming soon?"

I've known Bob since 1981. That's 25 years. July 5th is our 20th wedding anniversary. You'd think he'd be done surprising me, since I can generally know what he's thinking and finish most of his sentences to the point where actually saying the thing is kind of moot for both of us. But last night he sat smiling on the deck, with the sun setting around us and our smart, funny, astonishingly grown boys between us. And the man that is the best Dad I know looked across the table with those twinkling blue eyes and that smile I would walk a mile to see and he said "Mol, I can still surprise you, even after all these years."