It is early morning. Laila is lying next to me, sleeping. Lee is in another room, and I can hear him snoring. I hear a faint chirping sound, and at first I am unable to identify it as the sound of birds.
I open my eyes, and I am both excited and a little sad to see the sunlight coming through the windows.
I rise at 6:00 a.m. This is unusual for me; I am not a morning person. I make coffee and step outside onto the front porch. I expect it to be chilly like the air-conditioned house, but I am comforted by the sticky warmth. I study the marshes; their grasses glow a faint green in the early morning sun. A white heron swoops down and ducks out of sight. I believe I have found heaven again.
I walk to the back of the house, overlooking another marsh. We cannot see the ocean from this home, but I know we are close. I study the dark murky waters. Oyster beds peep from beneath the surface. I consider waking Connor to show him the oysters, which were completely covered when we arrived yesterday, but I think better of it. I grab a book and some coffee, and spend an hour reading.
We are vacationing in Litchfield this week, in my aunt’s beach house. As a young child I spent several summer days in this very house, playing with my cousins Anna, Jenny, and Andrew. When we arrived yesterday I was delighted to see that the small play house downstairs is still there, complete with a trap-door. When I was a child we would pretend it was a pirate ship.
But so much has changed about the house since I last visited it: they have added an extra room, and a deck overlooking the marsh in the back. They also have a floating dock now, which I don’t remember. There is a small garden in the back that wasn’t there before. And the front porch has been extended. The house is fabulous, and I am excited about the upcoming week.
When we arrived yesterday I told Lee I felt as if I were returning home. Not because of the house, per se, but because of the surrounding area. I have always felt a deep connection to the ocean and the marshes and beaches surrounding it. I grew up thirty minutes north of where we are staying, and I have so many fond memories involving the beach.
For two summers in high school I sold lemonade on the beach in Surfside; I developed a crush on a lifeguard named Josh, who left at the end of the summer to join the navy.
In high school I spent many days and evenings at the beach with my friend Victor. He had a jeep and an extra surfboard, and he was willing to drive to my parent’s house every day to pick me up and take me to the beach. When it got too hot we would go to his parent’s home, which was always air-conditioned to a nice 68 degrees and which had the softest, shaggiest carpet I have ever seen. We would lie in that carpet in the living room and watch t.v. until we had cooled down enough to return to the beach. In the evenings we would get cheese-fries to-go from Outback and take them to the beach to share.
The summer I was 18 was perhaps one of the best summers of my life. I worked in a restaurant with several high school friends. We spent our days at the beach and our evenings (after work) at dance clubs. We met Allyson, who was a student at Chapel Hill, and quickly befriended her. Allyson was staying in a beach home with a lady named Theresa, and I practically moved in with them.
When I was in college I was fortunate enough to live just a block from the ocean, off Dogwood in Surfside. When I was in law school, I often came home for the weekend and stayed with my good friend Ashley, who lived in Pawley’s Island.
The summer that I was 25 I lived in Myrtle Beach. I bought a surfboard, and befriended a group of surfers. They attempted to teach me to surf, and in the evenings after work I would take my surfboard to 62 Ave. N and ride the waves. Occasionally I actually managed to stand up. I was never very good, but I loved watching the waves roll to the shore from the water. All my life I had watched them roll in while standing on the beach; to see the back of the waves was new. The evening sun gave them a soft golden glow.
On the weekends I often stayed with Ashley in Pawleys, and we spent every Saturday and Sunday at the beach. We would arrive around 10:00 and stay until 6:00 or 7:00. We hung out with a large group of people, most of whose names I no longer remember. I always referred to them as the Pawley’s crew. I remember “Big Steve” would often comment on how lucky we were to live in Paradise.
“What could be better?” he would often ask. “We’re the luckiest people in the world.”
I agreed.
If someone had told me I would not be returning to the beach after law school, it is possible I never would have left. I intended to return. I planned to buy a home in Surfside and raise a family of surfer-children. But life had other plans for me. All in all, life is better than I could have imagined back then. But I still desperately miss the beach, and I still feel displaced in Columbia. A little like a fish out of water.
I console myself with the fact that Lee has agreed to move here with me once he retires. I plan to live out my old age in a house near the sea.
I also console myself with the fact that we are only three hours away, and since my parents still live near the beach, I can bring my children as often as I want. I am trying desperately to indoctrinate them with the same love for the sticky air, the marshy smell, and the salty water that I have. I encourage Connor to learn to swim by promising him that I will take him surfing as soon as he is a strong swimmer, and he seems excited about that. But it is still an uphill battle, since my husband so clearly prefers the air conditioning to the outdoors.
I was encouraged last night when Lee wanted to spend our first evening on the front porch.
“I like the hammock,” he commented.
“We could buy one. We can get one while we’re here,” I offered eagerly.
“Don’t go crazy, now. We have mosquitoes in our yard. There aren’t any bugs here.”
“We could get rid of the mosquitoes,” I said, unsure how we would really accomplish that, especially since I don’t like using pesticides. Bats? Frogs?
“But it’s hot at our house. We don’t have the breeze.”
“Well, what if we got some fans?”
I sighed, knowing it was futile. Even if I managed to create a breeze and eradicate all the bugs on our property, we wouldn’t have the salt smell. We wouldn’t have a beach nearby to provide that lazy sun-baked feeling.
But we are here, I thought. For one whole week we are here. And we can come back next year, and the next, and the next.
A small stone by my aunt’s door reads “If you are lucky enough to be at the beach, you are lucky enough.” I contemplate that for a moment, and realize how truly blessed we really are.
No comments:
Post a Comment