The heat. The heat. The heat. (I mean, come on … what else is there right now?)
I must be submerged in a large body of water all day long. Walking across a sidewalk and boardwalk with no shoes burns the bottoms of my feet. I find myself jumping, twisting and leaping from shadow to shadow cast by the lawn chairs just to get to the edge of the pool. The glare from the sun is blinding and overwhelming. Recklessly, I just dive right in … I might even be fully clothed, who cares? I can’t seem to get away from the heat fast enough! Diving into the pool with my sunglasses on, I have lost them 3 times already. The children dive below and scour the bottom of the pool for them … a seek-and-retrieve mission that seems to keep us all happy and busy for a while.
More heat. More humidity. No pause from it. Like a battle. Must stay outside. Don’t go in. Don’t cave. Be strong. You can do it. It’s summer for crying out loud, who sits inside? The feeble, the weak … the ones who can’t hack the heat. The smart ones sit inside. That’s who.
The boys are completely unaffected. They move like African gazelle with an abounding grace and alacrity. They leap, and jump across searing miles of sand as if it was as cool and comfortable as a day in May. They argue with me about the “You Promised Us” a Running Bases game in the sand. I must do it. I HAVE to do it. I rearrange the game so that one base is in the middle of the ocean … I cover THIS base. Solutions are out there, you just have to be literally standing in them in order to see it.
It is hard to imagine snow, rain or cold of any kind. My mind is racing to remember it all — it might help deaden the brain sizzle that is happening to me right now. I cannot seem to muster it.
The freezing waters of the Atlantic erase it all … swooshing waves cover me completely. I can feel my hair spreading out behind me like a vast swag of seaweed, tangled all over the place and then smooth again as soon as a wave pulls me under. Harry and I dive in front of one another, crossing waves just as they break. He is a flash of red bathing suit and blond, and I can hear him laughing loudly at the ocean. Danny is jumping closer to shore … telling me to turn around – to catch him — so he can swim out to me. I think he is even clutching a tennis ball in his right hand, ready for a game at all times. We practice riding waves in, judging and critiquing each wave on where and when it is about to break, and then to get out in front of it FAST and then stretch your body out like a surfboard – stay ahead of it, I yell as they squirm away from me and try to ride it all the way to the edge of the lifeguard stand.
Finally, the boys pause … wouldn’t actually call it done … just pausing. We roll up onto the beach and sit with our legs stretched out in front of us and let the little, quiet waves roll up and over us. Leaning back on our arms, we just sit for a minute finally cooled from head to toe. Danny recommends a dribble castle. And so it starts: good placement so the castle doesn’t get swept out to sea with the first wave, but close enough to get the right amount of necessary dribble water. The moat, the base for the castle and then the long, twisting, Gothic dribbles begin. I am grateful for this day, this place, this ocean, even the damn heat that has driven us all to this moment. It is good, it is simple and it is mine … even with my sunglasses sitting on the floor of the ocean
Wow, you put me right back into my eight-year-old self. Thank you Dor.
keep it coming.
love, C.