A Time with Ted Danson

It's surreal when time feels set to fast-forward in this pandemic, but that is what time feels like when I am away from my children. Days that are long, days that feel long - days with so much whining, so little alone time, so many obligations and food-prep, and so little repose - suddenly, without them, warp into hyper-speed. The three hours, four days a week that they are with our babysitter pass in true minutes. It's MARS TIME (time on Mars moves faster than time on Earth...something about gravity).

I had four spare hours on an 85 degree January (?!) Friday, so I sped myself to Malibu, with an oceanside ceviche and my book in the sand in mind. About ten minutes away from Broad Street Oyster Co., a sleek silver car passed me, and in it a driver with a sleek silver crop of hair. My stomach jumped in the way that only a brush with celebrity does; there's something illicit about it. We're not supposed to be that close to it, and yet here I am in this city, surrounded by it, but as always, separated by metal.

I sped up, casually glancing over while attempting to maintain the sleek silver car's velocity. The driver had expensive looking sunglasses on, that inimitable salted coiffure. It had to be Ted Danson. He sped up, so did I. He slowed down, so did I. I was always just missing him, his face obscured by designer aviators and the angle of his mirror. I wondered how far up the Pacific Coast Highway I would follow Ted Danson, but as we arrived at Malibu Country Mart, my ceviche'd destination, he pulled into the parking lot. My heart leapt, and I pulled in, too. Perhaps Ted Danson, too, had a hankering for a lunchtime lobster roll. He deserved one, didn't he? Hadn't he done so much for us?

I parked, somehow, in the open spot next to him, and watched him get out of his car. He walked, in that demonstrably relaxed way of his, towards the pick-up window at Broad Street Oyster Co., clearly savvy enough to have had an assistant (?) call his order in. I followed him, wishing I had put eye makeup on, a bra on, more natural deodorant on, anything on, really, and stood the globally approved distance apart from him as we waited behind a few people.

"Hello," Ted Danson greeted me.

"Hello," I replied back, my voice muffled behind a mask that graciously also muffled my gaping maw and the premenstrual pimple brewing on my chin, the very pimple flagrantly ignoring the fact that I am now 37 years old.

"How you doing today?" he asked magnanimously, Ted Danson, of me.

I faltered a moment. Is it even possible to make casual nonsense chit-chat with Ted Danson in the midst of a global pandemic, days after terrorists invaded our Capitol, elbows-deep in the psychological torture of a year spent in 1000 square feet super-glued to a boy that turned, frighteningly, 3 and a girl that turned, scarily, 2, their screeches and bi-hourly tantrums ringing in my ears at all times, nauseous with the monthly predictable yet depressive misery of pre-menstruation, after an hour-long ride spent weighed down by the heaviness of this interview?

"Not too great, Ted," I ventured. His eyes sparkled above his mask, winking in his notoriety, the notoriety a face veil couldn't even begin to silence. "It's been a hard week. Weeks." My voice quivered, and I heard it and reflexively looked around for Mary Steenburgen, the ur-mom whose vocal pulsing made it always sound like she was on the verge of tears.

"Aw, kiddo," the ur-dad Ted Danson replied. "It's a hard time for everyone. Just miserable."

"Even...for you?"

"Even for me," Ted Danson assented stoically. "Just remember, this is going to end. We get to come out the other side into a new world, here. Finally! For me, just in the nick of time!"

It was a wink to his age, but we all know that Ted Danson is age-less. I had so many philosophical questions about time and culture and the reckoning that I wanted to ask of him, but realized that he wasn't actually an architect of the afterlife. Then I longed to ask him for his favorite cocktail recipe, but then realized those late nights spent in bed with my parents, watching Cheers together, the white bar towel slung over this lithe drink of water's shoulder, that wasn't him, either. As I stood there, with a lump in my throat and a pit in my stomach, unsure of what to do next, he reached his arms out for a hug.

"C'mere."

I hesitated. I hadn't hugged anyone outside of my family in months. Surely, Ted Danson didn't count? Surely, he was an ephemera, a loping primogenitor ghost that just moved among us, impervious to time, space, and viral loads? He noted my hesitation, and guffawed.

"Oh, right! I keep forgetting. We can't." He arranged the top third of his face into a serious position. "Yet. But we will again, soon. Hugs for all." He swept his 8 foot radial arms out to the tens of people waiting in line, oblivious to the Ted Danson in their midst (mist).

I wanted to invite him to the beach with me, to read a book beside me, our incongruously-sized toes digging into the sand, gabbing away in between long, tender silences between us as we quietly observed the families around us, the man with a stomach as big and hard as my grandfather's puffed out in octogenarian confidence taking a selfie with the ocean (and sun) behind him, the little girls gleefully screaming from their boogie boards, the mom opening a can of 7Up for her daughter with a satisfying carbonated *POP* sound, the gay couple with the extraordinary matching mint swimsuits. We'd see it all, together, Ted and I. But then I realized that there was nothing casual about the invitation nor the carrying out of it. We would have to get into our separate cars, find separate parking, find each other again at the meter, trudge the distance in the hot, unwieldy sand 'til we found a spot, looking at each other to find when it would be appropriate to take our masks off so that we may actually eat our ceviche. I would be in a swimsuit on my first date with Ted Danson, effectively. It didn't make any sense. It just wouldn't do. To say nothing of the part where he would (probably) (generously!!!) decline my offer.

The Oyster Man called my name, handed me my lunch. I reached my hand out into the eternally maybe-toxic air, and mimed shaking his hand, my new friend, Ted, the father to us all, the man we all grew up relying on. Solid as a rock, that Ted Danson. Phantasmagoric as a beachside celebrity hallucination, filling the need for something bigger than myself, something different, something exciting. A cowboy with the haircut and calm, easy demeanor of a silver pheasant.

I got in my car, and drove to the beach, found parking, dragged myself across the sand, found a spot appropriately far enough away from others, and watched it all unfold, alone. The old man with his belly and his selfie. The little girl and her can of pop. The gay couple in their matching mint suits, who in another time would have inspired me to compliment them, and befriend them, but now, with masks, and distance, it just feels like...what's the point. Psychologically as well as physically, we're all at arm's length. Instead, I spent my time just, thinking. Feeling the sun on my face and the sand in my toes, thinking of the race with the man that looked just like Ted Danson, and how even though it wasn't him, it made the day just a little more exciting. A brush with the idea of Ted Danson. I'll take it.