A Day at the Beach

Ocean City NJ, August 2011

We parked and loaded up our Tommy Bahama back-pack chairs with towels and water and ipad and kindle and newspaper and knitting and an umbrella, then trekked down several streets to the beach. I stopped before we started across the sand and down to the water struck by the panorama.

There is nothing like being greeted by that salty wind and bright sun, and in the blue sky, a double-winged plane pulling a banner that said “Happy Bi thday Alison” with the ‘r’ missing. The beach was unusually wide with fine chalky sand, the waves were high and rumbled with a roar you only feel and hear when sitting near the water. We set up camp as close as we could to the ebb tide.

I am a sucker for all of it, but then again, I was taught to love the beach early in my life.  I remember treks to Jones Beach with my family when I was very young, then Rockaway Beach with my friends as a teenager.  The best days were when my Uncle Dominick wasn’t working, when we piled into his gigantic old Buick (I always sat on the floor in the back seat) with pans of macaroni, franks and peppers heroes and lots of fruit, and drove across the Bronx to the Throgs Neck Bridge and Jones Beach beyond.  There were always at least eight or ten of us (my parents, sisters, my aunt and uncle and cousins) in his car-- no seat belts in those days, no child restraint laws, but luckily we survived.

The funniest sight had to be two of us, usually the kids, carrying an old milk can filled to the brim with lemonade and ice by its double handles. If you know Jones Beach, you know the walks from the parking lots to the beach can be very, very long….  The can was heavy and hit my ankle bone with every other step, but that lemonade was oh so refreshing on a hot day at the beach.  My uncle or dad or one of the mothers (mine or Aunt Jeanne) would dig a deep hole for the can to be buried in, so that only the lid and a couple of inches of can were above the sand.  They had devised a simple yet innovative way to keep the lemonade cold all day long.  We ladled the lemonade into plastic glasses all day long.

I remember my cousin and me burying each other in the sand, only our heads sticking out.  I remember digging for tiny crabs near the water.  I remember pulling mussels off the jetty to cook later at home, and I remember holding on to the long ropes and floats that the lifeguards put out in the water to provide some feeling of security for those who were afraid of the waves.  I remember my mom standing by the edge of the water waving her arms and calling to us “Come back, you are out too far!”

We always arrived early and stayed till the sun was very low on the horizon, the lifeguard chairs had been abandoned and most beach-goers had left.  It was quiet at the end of the day, the sky was huge, and it became mesmerizing to just listen to and watch the waves.   Today I think The Captain and I will do the same.

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“My life is like a stroll on the beach...as near to the edge as I can go.”

--Thoreau