Midsummer

I’m on the beach in the middle of the day, in the middle of July. It’s low tide and a very different beach from the one I visited yesterday evening when the tide was high and there was barely enough room to set up a chair between the sea oats and the water.

The ocean is now quite a ways off from the dunes. People are out sunning, watching, reading, baking under a hot sun. A small child is building a sand castle with elaborate turrets of wet sand dripped from his hands. A teenager has just dashed into the waves, cooling off quickly, exuberantly.

This whole tableaux is timeless. It’s like the days stand still, motionless in the wind-tempered heat. My niece and nephew, here from the perpetually cool Pacific Northwest, are reveling in the wind and surf, and water they can actually swim in that isn’t 56 degrees in the middle of summer.

I remember when we’d come to this beach in the 1960s for summer vacation, leaving New Orleans behind for a week or 10 days. What a different world it was here! We’d arrive, unpack a few things, and then race out to the beach. That first day of vacaton seemed to promise an unbroken expanse of carefree days stretching to the horizon. The days passed, and we hungrily clung to each one, filling as much of it as we could out on the beach -- taking walks, swimming, body surfing, lying in the sun, listening to the radio, observing the passing scene as the hours went by.

At about 1 pm, we’d struggle in for lunch, sun-ripened, hot, a bit flushed, and ready for some air conditioning. My favorite lunch was a cheese sandwich with fresh summer tomatoes and mayonnaise on soft white bread, the kind of sandwich that was so delicious on a beach day, and which invariably clung to the roof of your mouth. This would be washed down with an ice-cold Fresca, a soft drink they don’t bottle any more, as far as I know.

Toward the end of the week, as the glorious vacation drew to a close, the pain of impending separation became more intense. Our steps were heavier. We did things a bit more slowly. We savored each hour on the beach more than ever.

I realized that summer was fleeting, school beckoned once again in a few weeks, and a part of my youth was slipping away, although I didn’t think in those terms at the time, of course. The endless summers never lasted long enough those many years ago, and they were gone before we knew it.