A Beach Vacation ~

At 8:00 AM on the first day of my beach vacation, I’ve awakened, coffee’ed and dressed early, to have the beach to myself. I’ll walk from Point of Rocks to the public beach, whose landmark is a row of lifeguard chairs, red, green, yellow, navy; easily visible on the northern horizon a couple road-miles away. I walk cross the dunes-bridge, which protects the natural grasses from tourist tracks, and stop.

People. Clusters of early birds have beat me to the beach. Footprints, from tiny flip-flops to enormous Nikes, from pedicured perfection to the most fallen arches, have already stirred up the loose sand that the waves never reach. I walk through the churned up surface, sinking slightly, thigh muscles tightening in response to ground that shifts with every step. I smile to myself, happy that there are still some muscles capable of feeling anything; that the cellulite hasn’t won every battle yet.

Picture this: Gulf Coast beach. Tide’s out so the sand is smoothed by the outgoing sea and feels like damp pavement. Tidal remains of the castles and moats dug the previous afternoon by wiry seven year olds using whatever was handy in Mom’s beach tote, create occasional obstacles beneath the feet. Sea-weed, entangled with tumbled shells, few intact from their tumultuous trip from sea to shore, marks the most recent high tide.

The water, to the west, is the pure blue of a kindergartner’s first painting of a pond. Watching them, no one wonders why sea-gulls are always rendered as soaring letter V’s. Landward, a wall of resorts shadows the earliest reclining sun-worshippers, who doze or read, waiting for the sun to pass the parapets.

As I reach the hard, walker-friendly surface that ebbs and flows with the wavelets, I pick up my stride, as comfortable as if I were on the walking-path back home. I am happy so I smile and say good morning to those approaching from the opposite direction. I am surprised to get no response.

I walk on, blithely, beginning to feel my joints less and less; they are being oiled by my internal Jiffy Lube. I smile some more, nod, say Hi. Nothing. I am rewarded with squints, as if I am invisible. Surely, IPODS and walkmen do not render people totally deaf and blind? Surely, eye-contact is okay on a sunny beach. This isn’t a parking garage at midnight, after all.

I suddenly feel as if I am being perceived as “easy,” an old-fashioned term to describe a girl who flirts with every boy and will kiss (or more) on the first date. A little embarrassed that I have so recklessly spoken to perfect strangers, albeit strangers who are members of AARP, I determine to keep my smiley face to myself.

But then someone smiles first; a lady, pale as I am. And I spontaneously smile back. Rewarded, I make my turn at the farthest lifeguard tower and forgetting not to, smile at an older gentleman, probably exactly my age, and he smiles back and says Hi. He too, is very untanned except for his nose and shins which glisten pinkly now and will peel tomorrow.

I soon realize that there is a protocol to beach-walking. People fall into two categories. The Old-Timers and The Newbies. The Old-timers have been here all winter and their skin shows it. They are tan, and ever so slightly wrinkled. The tanner they are, the squintier they look.

They probably had the beach all to themselves until last week when the snow-birds started descending, forcing them to alter the length of their stride. Or they are tired of saying Hi for the thousandth time to every passing walker and can’t they have a moment’s privacy without some smiley tourist bothering them with a jaunty nod?

The Newbies on the other hand can’t contain their joy at being only partially dressed on a sunny beach, the memory of sleet and snow-melt still fresh in their minds, their winter sniffles drying up in the sweet warm breeze. Their paleness makes them a little vulnerable, identifying them, like the beanies freshmen used to wear, so they eagerly smile back, feeling acknowledged and accepted when smiled upon.

They can’t help but smile and the Hello is automatic after being muffled for all these Artic months, when the wind disguised courtesy as frosty puffs. Their smiles say, “Aren’t we lucky?” and, “Oh, boy, I made it.”

After fourteen days at the beach, my skin now has a golden hue, the one that dermatologists warn against but which I’ve permitted to sneak past my SPF 30, a little at a time. I no longer have to glance down at the path in front of me as I walk the beach every day, my ankles and feet having developed a second-sense response to the swoops and swales of the beach terrain.

As I walk I feel hypnotized by the beauty, squinting ahead, all my senses clipping along: look at that pelican dive, smell that Coppertone and Banana Boat, listen to that fisherman’s line zip through the breeze, then plunk into the waves, the waves you can barely hear, just a woosh-slap, woosh-slap and that silly gull laughing at the lady in the big pink hat.

And then the voice of the pale person just passing by saying Hi, that I almost don’t hear, it is so much a part of the whole. An Old-Timer, I’ve become, just before it’s time to go home.

Art by Mo ~ altered photo

Another vacationer's dream

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