Take Me As I Am by Charmaine Gordon

Take Me As I Am

by Charmaine Gordon

“She’s sleepin’,” I heard the smallest boy say. Giggles. Little fingers lifted my sunglasses and dropped them back on my sun burned nose. More giggles

Almost sleepin’, I thought, eyes closed. Easy to doze in the hot sun, heavy wet sand covering most of my ample body. This band of munchkins wore themselves out carrying little red, blue, and striped plastic pails of sand. When a high pitched voice interrupted my reveries to ask if they could cover my toes, I’d said sure. Little did I know they’d get carried away and create a small mountain of me at this end of St. Augustine Beach. And little did I know they would abandon me for cookies and juice as the tide began to roll back in. It was a warning. You too can be replaced by a cookie. Should be posted at the beach and given along with every birth certificate.

I wiggled my toes, not easy to do under the heavy blanket of sand. The right big toe worked its way free, pink flamingo nail polish reflecting the sun and water. I grinned at my selection of color.

When I’d ventured off my veranda onto the sand not too long ago and trudged toward the secluded area where boulders formed a natural barrier, the tide was out. No one was around to see my built-for- comfort body in a swim suit. The beach towel had shaken flat with one shake. That was the first good omen today. I’m a collector of good omens. Like money in the bank. I rolled my terry cloth cover-up into a makeshift pillow and lowered myself to the towel. Big sunglasses covered green eyes and part of full cheeks, floppy straw hat shaded my strawberry blond curly hair. My best feature, Mom said when she wasn’t nagging me about going on a diet. After lathering with sunscreen, at last I was ready to ponder my non-existent personal life and chart a different course for the future. I’d planned to contemplate my navel but my double D cups got in the way. No navel in sight. Then the kids showed up. Never could resist little ones. Now they were gone and I had all the solitude needed to sort out a muddle of thoughts.

Why bother going out in the sun; spend money on yet another swim suit guaranteed to make you look slimmer? Choices. It all came down to choices. Chocolate or tofu? No contest. Thirty five and chubby. Smart enough to become a doctor, to have a paid-up house on the beach, a…

Pain as all the air whooshed out of me. Something fell across my body. I couldn’t breathe. Something moved. Not a thing. It was a person. A man’s voice. Deep, husky, concerned.

“Did I hurt you? I was running and tripped over…well I didn’t realize someone was under the sand.”

“Oh,” I moaned and tried to get up. The sand held me down and so did he. The man. I opened my eyes and through the sunglasses, saw Antonio Banderas. Not really the actor but he sure looked like him. I almost said, “Kiss me before the tide washes away the sand and you’ll run screaming from my fatness,” but I didn’t. I just lay there like a lox on a plate and continued to moan.

“Don’t move,” he said.

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Charmaine Gordon has many years of experience as an actor on daytime drama. Stage, spokesperson and commercials plus writing sketches for Air Force shows helped prepare her for the wonders of a writing career. She didn’t realize it at the time when immersed in the written words of others, that she was like a sponge, soaking up how to construct a scene, write dialogue, and paint the setting.

Her writing effort came later when she wrote a two page story, sent it to her son, Paul, who commented, “Cool. Can you write ten pages?” Though it seemed impossible to her, the story poured from her fingers and seventy thousand words later, she typed The End.

She kissed her acting career goodbye, leaving on a high note with the lead in an Off Broadway play, “The Fourth Commandment” author Rich Knipe. It was great fun and time to move on. Movies like “Working Girl”, “Road to Wellsville” and having the pleasure of Anthony Hopkins company at lunch, working with Mike Nichols in “Regarding Henry” and singing outside with Harrison Ford, crying with Gene Wilder over loss on another set, When “Harry Met Sally” with the whole gang singing It Had to Be You. Lots of fond memories. Her first job as stand-in leg model for Geraldine Ferraro in a Diet Pepsi commercial with Secret Service men guarding her and her daughters. A sweet time.