As a child I spent many summers at a small beach community on the Connecticut shore. It has been years since I have done anything more than visit for a day. My husband, preferring the Cape was never convinced that a piece of heaven could exist along Connecticut’s shoreline. I managed to convince him last summer that a week would be all it would take to make him a believer; it took less than a few hours.
I suppose there are a few communities left that have playgrounds and tennis courts and activities for kids that don’t require a mom to lug everyone back and forth all day long. But this community holds a sweet spot in my heart. My kids can do what I did, ride bikes, swim, go crabbing, play on the playground and I can see them at all these activities from my front porch. Of course I don’t think they fully grasp what a gift this is. I am sure I didn’t grasp how lucky I was to spend lazy summers bike riding , playing in the sand and eating a diet of corn on the cob and ice cream. Now as I bike around the years slip from my body, dropping a decade here and a decade there until I am freckle faced, toe headed and not to mention quite a few pounds lighter. I ride past cottages we rented, some updated, some not and can see through the windows and find myself playing “war” with my patient mother and two decks of cards, eating ice cream with my cousins and washing sand and salt off my tanned skin in the outdoor shower.
I can hear the waves lapping gently on the shore at night like a lullaby softly singing me to sleep. The thick hum of voices and laughter of the adults who came to visit my parents rings in my ears all these years later. Afternoons were spent swimming and digging in the sand until the six o’clock whistle blew and my father would have to concede that another beach day had come to an end and mom would be waiting for us. He would station me in the metal bike seat, no helmet, no belt and I would wobble behind him as he steered us home, his unbuckled sandal straps flapping all the way.
I would play with children I saw one month out of the year but we would pick up where we left off. We would make drippy sand castles and hunt for sea glass. We would wrap ourselves in towels and our feet in kelp like Roman sandals, and then parade up and down the boardwalk. Babies slept on blankets and the sweet smell of Coppertone coconut oil blew across your face with the breeze.
A group of older women sat near us each day. Their beach chairs creating a half circle facing the water and their voices chatting until the sun itself became tired. One woman had short cropped hair, white as a pale moon and silver bangle bracelets running up her arms. Her skin hung from her bones like dried kelp, brown and wrinkled, yet there was something innately attractive about her. Her whole being seemed one with the sand and the ocean as though she had been born from it. I watched for her arrival each day it signaled the completeness of my beach experience.
These women were perhaps grandmothers then. They may have been resting from their many summers of swimming, sand castle building and crabbing with their own children. I never knew their names. But I am sure their grandchildren are here somewhere. Time moves forward and although it does feel a bit like a time warp and 1975 is swirling around in my own mind, I can see the changes. Kids are now parents, parents now grandparents. The beaches are the same, the charge in the air each morning as the sun rises and the salt air blows in through the windows and the echo off the water of voices as people begin their day with a bike ride, a run or a walk with an old friend.
As I sit on the beach, my three year old perched on my lap, I am fully aware that to some young girl I am the older woman, perhaps slightly dried out by the sun but on the inside I am 5, digging in the sand and breathing in the salty sweetness of my childhood.
