Chicken Soup for the Beach Lover's Soul (15 page)
Then it begins. Here they come. What are they thinking? They jog. They speed walk. They bike ride. They disrupt our peace. I decide we need to take matters into our own hands. Someone has to do something. I appoint us the JSWWYTP, which stands for Jersey Shore What Were You Thinking Police. We give out imaginary fines to those who haven't a clue as to how ridiculous they look.
We start with the jogger who looks like he will pass away any minute from exhaustion. Not only are his shorts stuck to him with sweat, they have slits up the sides showing more than we need to know. He's guaranteed a fine each day until he just vaporizes into outer space. Not far behind the jogger is the speed walker. She stands so straight, with her shoulders pinned back, that we can't tell if she is coming or going. She gets a double fine because we don't have time to guess her direction. Now we hear the next victim. He's carrying his portable CD player with headphones plugged in, singing at the top of his lungs to some rap song. Heâand most eardrums will agreeâgets a fine for noise pollution and bad taste in music.
We try to be patient and fair. But some people just don't get it. We watch as the lone couple on the beach is surrounded by all the other beachgoers. These drones search the sand, and the only place they feel comfortable is next to or in front of this couple. No other place on these miles of beach suits them. They all get the “I'm afraid to be alone” fine. Then, parading in front of us is a rather obese middle-aged man wearing a bathing suit, what we can see of it anyway, that didn't fit him back in the 1980s when he bought it. He gets the book thrown at him.
Just when we think we've had enough for the day, we see the little kids carrying their pails or dragging a wagon full of toys onto the beach. Their bodies are so small, you wonder how it all fits in them: heart, bones, muscles, and brains. Their only mission today is to have fun. They don't care who's singing off-key or walking backwards. It's sunny out and it's time to play.
So my husband and I put away our imaginary ticket book and focus on those who have it right, at least for the next twenty years. Then, I'm sorry to say, some of them will pass our way and have to be fined for becoming an adult who, like the others before them, just don't get it.
Maryann Pasqualone
“I took my work to the beach for the day!”
Reprinted by permission of Stephanie Piro.
©
2005 Stephanie Piro.
H
ealing does not mean going back to the way
things were before, but rather allowing us to
move closer to God.
Ram Dass
Sunlight streamed through the sliding glass doors that overlook the ocean in the distance and the swimming pool immediately below. From the small kitchen island, where I mechanically soaped down a pan from breakfast, I looked beyond the living room of the fourth-floor condo we had rented for Labor Day and gazed at the seamless brilliance of blue sky and ocean. Sunlight! That's what I needed to banish the dark clouds clinging to my heart.
Crossing the width of the living area, I slid open the door to the balcony. Laughter from the pool below fanned refreshingly into the tired, aching places of my soul.
I was physically exhausted and emotionally drained. Earlier in the summer, what was to have been a happy family reunion and holiday with our budding teenage girls and my parents in California had turned into a time of unexpected mourning. The glitter of our anticipated Hollywood vacation had been clouded by the sudden death of my father a week before our planned departure. Instead of celebration, I spent two months with my mother sifting through my father's things and bringing her home to Florida to help her heal and mourn her loss.
Now it was my turn. After pouring myself into my mother's grief and loneliness, I needed my own time to heal. And so we had come to the beach, where I was free to let my mind wander through familiar and forgotten places and reach into the longings of the past to try to draw out nectar for the future.
Suddenly the door burst open, and two wet girls with silver braces shining from their teeth stood before me, their bodies wrapped in beach towels.
“Mommy, can we go down to the beach?”
“We're all going down in a little while,” I said, struggling to let go of my melancholy meanderings.
“But we wanna go now!” Julie pleaded.
“Why can't you wait a little? Aren't you enjoying the pool?”
The girls grinned sheepishly at each other.
“We'd really like to go now. Can't we, Mommy?” Laura dutifully echoed her older sister.
My attention snapped to the present. “Why? Are there some cute boys down there or something?”
Their grins broadened.
“Well, let me get my bathing suit on.”
They squirmed in agitation, bouncing from their knees up. “That'll take too lo-ong!”
“Okay,” I conceded. “You can go down to the beach, but don't go past the condo and don't go in the water till Daddy and I get there.”
In a flash, the wet drips on the carpet were abandoned. The door slammed, and I heard wet, pattering feet running down the hall.
That afternoon as my husband and I sat under our umbrella on the beach, we watched two girls tiptoeing into their early teens as they strutted through white sand in new bathing suits. Giggling and posing in self-conscious innocence, they periodically dropped down on the blanket beneath our umbrella to report on the triumphs of the day.
“What a pair,” Marv said as we watched them saunter down toward the ocean once again.
The tape in my mind did a quick rewind, and I saw myself at thirteen strolling along a Southern California beach in a yellow two-piece. At a distance my father raised his camera, eyes twinkling and face beaming. The camera clicked.
“Those are two beautiful girls,” my husband observed, laying his camera on the beach towel.
Two boys approached our daughters in the water. Demure smiles brightened. The blond boy took the lead, talking, gesturing. They were laughing. Proudly, Laura glanced our way and smiled. I smiled back and waved, but she pretended not to see.
I chuckled. Heavy layers of fatigue and sorrow began to peel away under the warmth of a bright summer sun and sweet sense of today. “Our little girls are growing up,” I said.
Marv nodded and pulled me close as the tableau unfolded at the water's edge.
Together we watched yesterday evaporate into today while today danced in the sunlight and flowering of a new generation. Our daughters' dreams were for tomorrow. Ours curled around us in the present and unfolded one by one, waiting to be captured and held close in this singular moment of time.
“This has been a great day,” Marv said. “Let's come back here again sometime.”
But I wasn't sure we ever could.
Linda W. Rooks
“Why is this happening to me?” I shouted to the wind. Standing ankle-deep at the Pacific Ocean's edge, I wanted to screamâbut no one would hear me. I was alone.
I'd just divorced after a seventeen-year marriage. On top of that, I moved from a midwestern state all the way to Southern California. Back there, I lived on the shores of Lake Michigan. The water was always on my right. Here, the water was on my left. Everything seemed backward, including my life.
I thought I'd still be married. Happily ever after, right? Instead, I was building a brand-new life in a brand-new state. It felt wrong, and yet so right.
I looked up at the clouds overhead. They were white, filled with promise.
I heard the seagulls squawking as they swooped around the cliffs behind me.
I gazed out to sea. It stretched out endlessly, seemingly beyond eternity. The water shimmered when the sun peeked out from behind the clouds.
But it was the waves, the constant and ever-flowing waves that calmed me, soothed me, and sent a message deep into my soul.
Life was all about ebb and flow. Some things come to you; some things are taken away. But then more things come to you . . . and more and more and more. It never stops. Life goes on.
A couple of years later I found myself sitting astride a low cement wall gazing out at that same Pacific Ocean. Only this time I wasn't alone.
“Here you go,” a handsome man said. “One order of fish and chips with an ocean view.”
“Thanks,” I replied and placed the warm paper basket on my lap. The fish was delicious, but it was whom I was with that was even more thrilling.
“I have something to ask you,” he said. Then he put the remainder of our lunches aside. Kneeling in the sand, he took my hands. “Would you marry me? I know I have a lot of baggage, and I know . . .”
“Shhhh,” I whispered. “Yes, I'll marry you.”
As we rose to our feet to embrace, I was facing the ocean. The waves were cresting and reaching for shore. The sun was bright and high in the sky. The air was warm as a gentle breeze caressed my bare shoulders.
Ebb and flow, life goes on, sometimes even sweeter than before.
B. J. Taylor
M
emory is a child walking along the
seashore. You can never tell what small
pebble it will pick up and store away
among its treasured things.
Pierce Harris
Fun in the sun in Ortley Beach, New Jersey, had been a summer tradition for my family and many of my friends' families for years. Everyone would rent a bungalow within walking distance of the beach for two weeks or so. Sometimes the vacations would overlap and we kids lucked out. I remember stretching one vacation for almost the whole summer by staying at someone else's house. Oh, not just me, but the whole group of us.
The group would meander to the beach around 10:30 AM and stay until 4:00 PMâeventually everyone would make an appearance. Every day our group gathered to enjoy one another's company like long-lost friends who had not seen each other in years.
In those days no one questioned kids around the age of twelve going to the beach by themselves, for as I recall, we knew our limitations and never thought of challenging them. We were more interested in just getting together, sporting a suntan, meeting boys, and dreaming about dating the lifeguards.
We would bring sandwiches, snacks, and Thermoses filled with iced drinksâliterally ready to camp out for the day. Some days we would splurge and buy a hot dog, cold soda, and the best lemon-ice cup at the refreshment stand.
Our days were routine: sunbathing on colorful beach towels and blankets while listening to and singing along with songs from the Hit Parade on the portable radio, playing volleyball, building sand castles, and collecting seashells for craft projects.
On those occasional sweltering days, we would speed across the hot sand down to the water's edge and splish and splash in the cool ocean waves. This, however, was a secret ploy to get a closer look at the “men” on duty, bound to protect us poor “helpless” women, ages twelve and thirteen. Besides, it was refreshing and we were at the beach!
Come four o'clock we would pack up, rush home to shower, fix our hair, eat supper, put on a snazzy new outfit, and head out for boardwalk adventures in the next town, Seaside Heights. Anticipated fun and excitement welcomed us every night. We never got bored because there was sooo much to do.
Amusement rides: the merry-go-round, the whip, the roller coaster, the haunted house . . . and more.
Games of chance: ring toss, dart the balloons, wheels of fortune to win humongous stuffed animals and tiny plastic trinkets, watergun horse races . . . and more.
There were arcades, food stands, salt water taffy, cotton candy, and pizza by the slice.
Not to mention the clams on the half-shell, fortune tellers, and the movie theatre (only one) packed on rainy days.
Oh, to return to the days when life was simpler and safer, and when spirits soared. A time when the future meant tomorrow and the next day's activities were the only major concernâeven though we knew what they would be. What a gift it would be to take a trip back in time and revisit those lazy, hazy days of fun in the summer sun at the beach. To rendezvous with those who played such an important part of your life. Review the experiences that made you who you are today. A trip, if you will, that would take you back to yesterday's future. A trip you would not change.