Chicken Soup for the Beach Lover's Soul (22 page)

I take them home to call my own

With great care I polish and clean

And put the shells in a special place, to be admired and seen

From my years on the shore, my collection I treasure

I recall those walks, with extraordinary pleasure

And when my days on earth are complete

Eternally I will be on the most beautiful beach

As a shell I will delight in the heavenly sand

I will wait anxiously until I am in my Creator's hand

Life's lessons of joy and happiness, grief, and pain

Have left me old and scarred, broken and gray

The beauty of my youth and faded long since

My life though tough has been quite rich

Now I see coming a most comforting sight

It's my Maker, Creator choosing shells with delight

As I wait for my Creator to come

Shells are being chosen for the heavenly kingdom

All I can do is wait patiently and see

And pray he did not take shelling tips from me.

Paula Gunter-Best

Four Blocks Up

T
he larger the island of knowledge, the longer
the shoreline of wonders.

Ralph W. Sockman

My beach boys have come to my home at the shore for a visit. Grandson Ben is six years old, Jake nine. Both understand that they are coming to a special place and life will change dramatically because they are here. There will be a lot of sitting in rocking chairs, telling stories, not rushing about, and hours at the beach. They wave to me from the porch and their faces glisten with anticipation.

“Is it time to go to the beach?” Ben asks. It doesn't matter if it's summer and the town is filled with tourists, or winter and filled with snow. Ben asks the question anyway. For he knows four blocks up, it's waiting. Like a promise never broken—his friend, the ocean, greets him with another friend: tons of sand. And perhaps even the little-boy friend he met a few months ago, running across the beach. Ben already holds his bucket and shovel. He is ready for another shore adventure.

My grandsons have been beach boys since they were born. In the warm weather, as soon as we approach the boardwalk, they take off their socks and shoes for they realize the beach expects such changes. It also expects them to sift the sand through their fingers, discover an important seashell, and in the summer, visit the ocean and get wet. The ocean refuses to be ignored.

As beach boys, one of Ben and Jake's first lessons is to learn to respect the ocean. It demands respect. Though it plays with them, runs up and gently touches their legs, splashes against their faces tenderly, they realize it has another side. Young beach boys learn this early in life. So they must always be at the ocean's edge with an adult watching them. They must understand from an early age that the ocean doesn't realize its own energy, and it sometimes can overpower an unsuspecting human being.

When both are on the beach, they are always discovering new treasures, like the seagulls soaring overhead, cawing to one another and dipping low over the beach as if to greet them. Or the foghorns, constant in the distance on a day when the fog rolls in from the ocean and blankets the shore. The ocean communicates with my grandsons, and they have learned to know its moods. On a stormy day it thunders against the jetties and sounds like a train rushing down the street toward us.

There is much to entertain Ben and Jake when they are here. Cars, hundreds of them, rush into the town at summertime with boats, bicycles, and beach chairs attached. Tourists pack the sidewalks. They are hurrying to escape. They are getting away from ticking clocks and schedules and jobs. The ocean will see to it that they forget what they have left behind. “Can we go fishing later?” Jake asks. His fishing poles are waiting in the shed. He watches the fishermen walk by, carrying their poles, the families carrying picnic baskets and blankets and beach chairs. They are laughing, happy. It is vacation time— when everybody looks good and feels good—when reality packs its belongings and heads out of town.

“Can we go to the beach, Ga Ga?” one asks after the other. They are already walking toward the boardwalk, as if being pulled in that direction.

In a world that changes from moment to moment, Ben and Jake can count on the beach always guarding the ocean—waiting for them—four blocks up.

Harriet May Savitz

Condo Without a View

T
he best thing one can do when it's raining is to
let it rain.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Ocean view condo near the beach” read the brochure. I closed my eyes and visualized salty breezes, swaying palms, and warm sand between my toes. Our anniversary falls on March 16, and this year I wanted to celebrate it at the beach. When I informed my husband, Dan, of my idea, he groaned.

“I don't want to spend our anniversary freezing at Myrtle Beach.”

“Oh, pooh. Myrtle Beach will be warm by March, and we'll get the cheap rates. Think of those juicy shrimp dinners.”

We arrived at Myrtle Beach on a Saturday afternoon— the only occupants in the entire resort. Dan glared at me as we removed our luggage from the trunk. A cold rain stung our faces.

“Now take it easy, Dan. Let's just get to our room and unpack. I'm sure the weather will warm up.”

“I hope so. There's no way I'm sitting on the beach when it's only forty-nine degrees.”

We unlocked the door to our condo and confirmed that our room had an ocean view, as promised. Only you needed a telescope to see it. We had no problem seeing the dumpster and the asphalt parking lot.

The next day Dan and I donned our bathing suits at my insistence and headed for the beach. We also wore our sweat suits since the weather was still a little chilly. The wooden boardwalk to the ocean resembled the Great Wall of China. It went on and on, over marshland and sand dunes, as we stumbled along its uneven boards, occasionally tripping over nails sticking up through the floor.

Finally, we arrived at the beach, where a brisk wind whistled through the sand dunes. I removed my sweat suit and made a feeble attempt to sunbathe.

“Are you crazy?” asked Dan. “You're not going to get a tan. You're going to get pneumonia.”

Five minutes of goose bumps and shivering convinced me that Dan was right. I put my sweat suit back on and suggested a short walk to warm us up. With our jackets tightly zipped and our hands stuffed into our pockets, we marched rapidly down the deserted beach. On the way back, we noticed the tide had risen and formed a shallow pool that now blocked our way. It was too cold to wade barefoot through it, but neither of us wanted to walk all the way around it. We were anxious to return to our warm condo.

“We can jump that little pool, Dan. It's not that wide. Let's give it a try.”

With my long legs, I sailed into the air and across the pool with no problem. I landed right on the edge of the water and barely wet my sneakers.

“It's your turn, honey. Come on. You can do it.”

Pumping his arms, Dan got a running start and shot into the air like an arrow. First he went straight up. Then he came straight down. He landed with a big splash right in the middle of the pool, knee deep in icy water. His eyes bulged, his nostrils flared, and his teeth chattered, but he laughed just as loudly as I did at his misadventure. We retreated hastily to our condo before he froze completely.

The weather never improved during the week. We salvaged what we could of our vacation and anniversary celebration by visiting the malls and stuffing ourselves nightly with seafood.

“It could have been worse,” I told Dan on the way back to Oak Ridge.

“How?” he responded. “It rained most of the week, and the temperature never even reached fifty degrees!”

“It's all a matter of perspective, Dan. Just think—we could have been hit by a hurricane.”

Judy DiGregorio

“We got to thinking—Florida has fish too,
and it's a lot warmer.”

Reprinted by permission of Patrick Hardin.
©
1998 Patrick Hardin.

Dolphins

N
othing in life is to be feared. It is only to be
understood.

Marie Curie

My granddaughter Margaret and I are sitting on the edge of our wharf, feet dangling, while we watch a smiling mammal toss a fish high over its head for the third time. The animal splashes and rolls, and before we know it, my previously bored grandchild and I are in the water, tossing a ball, splashing, and laughing—a lesson in making our own fun learned from a dolphin.

I am not surprised, because I have an idea that dolphins, like dogs, have a special kinship with humans. They manage to bridge a metaphysical gap between terra firma and their own mysterious environment, which makes the connection almost magical.

An hour later, Margaret and I are back on the wharf. The creak of the hammock's chain lulls her to sleep while I watch the gray sheen of dorsal fins arcing through green water, remembering a day like this one when Margaret's mother and aunt were little girls.

Loaded down with towels and drinks and floats, we had made our way down the oyster-shell drive, across the shimmering black ribbon of asphalt road, and onto the expanse of a beach that looks more like sugar than sand. We spread towels close to the gently breaking waves, weighing corners against the breeze with flip-flops and shells. A blue heron stood tall and gazed reverentially out over the water like a tourist enjoying his first glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico. I kept one eye on a magazine, the other on my girls splashing at the water's edge.

The heron's irritated squawk made me look over as he took off, his great wings pumping through soft air. An old man with a very large Confederate flag tattooed across his back walked past with a curt nod, sat in the heron's vacated spot, and lit a cigarette. Almost immediately, a group of four or five teenaged boys appeared from the direction of the road. They had long hair, a loud radio, and intimidating attitudes. They looked at us as if we were poison. The old man shot them an equally unfriendly stare. One of the boys mumbled something as he looked our way, and they all laughed and snickered. The old man flinched, sending a flutter across the sagging battle flag, and glanced nervously at my children and me. The boys' mutterings took on low tones, and with narrowed eyes, one of them turned the radio up. The old man took a deep drag, never taking his eyes off the boys, and pegged the rest of his cigarette into the white foam of a breaking wave.

It had taken only a few minutes to turn the atmosphere of that lovely beach ominous with human fear and distrust. The only ones unaware of it were my little girls, who played happily along the seam of a continent and a gulf. I was preparing to gather them, resisting and complaining, along with all of our paraphernalia, when my older daughter called out, “Look! Look at the dolphins!”

Several of them circled and rolled in the calmer water just beyond the sandbar. They made dolphin noises, which I had never heard before. It was as if they were trying to get our attention.

The old man walked over to my daughters. “Look at them fish,” he said. “I believe they're talking to you girls.”

“Really?” said the children, and the old man smiled.

The boys turned the radio off and gathered near us at the shoreline now, pointing and smiling, children again themselves, enjoying just being boys.

They laughed with the girls, and answered with a polite “Yes, sir” when the old man asked, “Did you see that?”

Suddenly two of the dolphins shot up into the air, shining and sparkling, like silver rockets against the dazzling blue of our summer sky. We were so overcome at the sheer beauty and power of the spectacle that we all began to clap and cheer, brought together by the joy of nature.

When we left, I gave the boys and the old man our leftover drinks. The boys helped us pack up our things. As we trudged through the powdery sand toward the road, I could hear them talking to the old man.

“You ever see dolphins do that?”