Beach Umbrella

In the past I would spend an entire day at the beach with no thought to sunscreen. I didn’t even own any. But the children have changed that. They have tender, sensitive skin, and I am constantly afraid that they will get a sunburn.

Because of that, we have spent the entire week battling a beach umbrella. And although I am an experienced beach bum, I have no experience whatsoever involving beach umbrellas.

We don’t even own one. We were planning to buy one, but there are three in the storage shed downstairs. So we are using the ones here.

Our first day at the beach we looked at the umbrella, studied the other umbrellas around us, and wondered how to set it up. I stuck the pole in the ground and began twisting.

“That’s not going to work,” Lee said.

He picked up a plastic shovel and began pounding the top of the pole.

A man nearby, sitting underneath a perfectly-placed umbrella, saw us and brought over a shovel. Not a cheap plastic one, but a heavy-duty shovel, similar to the one I use in the garden.

“Thanks,” Lee said.

“You’ll need to get it about two feet in to keep the wind from knocking it over,” he said.

The guy returned to his chair. Lee began pounding the top of the pole with the heavier shovel.

“I saw a shovel like this in the shed,” Lee commented. “I didn’t know this was what it was for.”

Why a shovel? I thought. Why not a mallet?

Lee managed to get the umbrella in the ground, and we returned the shovel. The guy looked as if he wanted to say something, but declined.

The following day we were ready. We arrived at the beach with our umbrella and our shovel, and we began pounding. Perfect, I thought. But I still couldn’t figure out how everyone else managed to get their umbrellas so deep. Our umbrella was at least a foot higher than the umbrellas around us, and the wind constantly caught underneath it. A few times the wind pulled it completely from the ground.

On the third day we forgot the shovel. Lee offered to walk back to the house to get it. While he was gone, I stood holding the umbrella over Laila, who had fallen asleep on the walk over and was napping in the sand. A guy nearby saw me. I saw him approach with a shovel. I smiled.

“Would you like me to dig a hole for your umbrella?” he offered.

“Oh, thank you,” I replied. And then, in case he thought I didn’t know how to put an umbrella in, I added, “We forgot our shovel. My husband returned to the house to get it.”

He dug the hole, about two feet deep. When Lee returned I was sitting under a perfectly placed umbrella. I thought back to the first day, when we pounded away at the umbrella, trying to hammer it into the ground.

“You’ll never believe this,” I began. “Apparently, the shovels are for digging.”