Beach Song
by Sara Molinaro
The beach, that eternal beauty, can be a capricious mistress. In March, when the skies are more white than blue, she devotes to you her entire energy. She snuggles close and wraps her arms around you; she seduces and convinces you — you, yes you, you are her one and only love. Her cold sand stings your bare feet, but she sings her quiet melody and presents you with an eye-feast of rolling waves, shells and sea glass, unspoiled horizons and the idea that you could just traverse her for miles upon unending miles.
In July, when the sun bears down and provokes sweat, she can be harder to live with. Her once-flawless figure is now blemished with dented plastic coolers and cheap nylon umbrellas; her quiet song cannot be heard underneath screaming children and scolding parents. She refuses to love only you — "I have so many admirers, can't you see? How could I possibly choose?" — but you remain with her, waiting for that sacred moment when the people-noise dies down just enough that you can hear her voice in your ear.
"I'm still here," she whispers, her beauty crossing your senses for a fleeting moment.
Sweaty, Sandy People: A Catalog
All quotes are real.
The reasonable father: This man just wants to have a nice day on the beach. He will chastise his children as far as he thinks they are annoying other people — "Hey guys? That's enough with burying the lady. I think we should call it a day with the burying" — but is willing to let them throw things at each other, eat sand, etc. Eventually he falls asleep under an umbrella, only to awaken to a freezing salt-water shower given benevolently by his three-year old with a bucket.
The mother with sand in her vagina: She just wants to go home and take a shower. Everything that her kids do annoys her — "Sit on your towel and eat your blueberries, gosh darn it!" She never really lost the baby weight and feels fat next to all these women who are practically teenagers. She will leave the beach at the first imaginable opportunity.
The drunk uncle: He is drinking vodka out of a red Solo cup. After a few nonsensical mutterings to no one in particular ("I always said this was a mafia town!") he will fall asleep on a towel and stay that way until the tide comes in.
The stockbroker aunt: Wearing a baseball cap and workout shorts over her bikini, she's willing to play a game of whiffle ball so long as it doesn't take her too far from her Blackberry. Will start drinking the uncle's vodka once he falls asleep; wants to give everyone advice about how to invest their money. "Don't buy cotton futures! Cotton is looking awful right now."
The foreign au pair and the little kid: Have no sense of space and think it's OK to play catch directly above the towel where you are sleeping. The au pair will yell the child's name over and over with no evident purpose. "Adrienne! Adrienne! Adrienne? Adrienne. Adrienne, Adrienne, Adrienne!"
The group of male children: Aged anywhere between 7 and 30, they will play an extremely competitive game of football for hours on end. There must exist an unspoken rule that all game-play must pause while an attractive woman in a bikini walks by, and immediately resume when she is out of sight.