THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 12, 1994 TAG: 9407090073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
WAKE UP TO the bright summer sun streaming through the window. Roll out of bed, dragging the sheet behind you. Grab the driest pair of swim trunks. Shuffle up to the beach, spread the sheet out on the sand, plop down and close your eyes again.
Ahh - the good old days, beach-wise. Free. Easy. Unencumbered.
It was the summer I did the college-student thing that college students do in Maryland and worked at Ocean City. In my case, that meant lifeguarding at a hotel pool - No. 1 task: picking up wet towels - and tossing pizzas, where I scrambled like everyone else to avoid the orders requesting anchovies. That smell would stick on you for days.
Back then, we used to scoff at the families that chugged onto the beach: Mom, Dad and the kids, loaded down like the Donner Party, their ``tourist ankles'' marking them as beach amateurs. ``Tourist ankles'' are those bright-red sunburned areas usually covered by socks. ``Tourist ankles'' were not cool.
It's funny how fast things change.
Fast-forward a short decade. Zoom in on a loaded-down family making repeated trips from car to sand. That's us, storming the beach with our infant daughter.
Along with her, we're also carrying an umbrella. A portable playpen. A blanket. Some towels. A cooler with baby formula. A diaper bag with diapers. A beach bag with beach stuff. Chairs. Cover-ups. Sunglasses. Sunscreen in three strengths, including stuff in a pink tube for babies with a number so high that it seems it should work even on the sun's surface. Warming back in the car are plastic jugs of water to wash off all the sand and salt that somehow didn't make it into the kid's mouth.
Mount Everest has been climbed with less stuff.
The only thing missing were knee-high black dress socks and a lei around my neck. I couldn't help but notice the glances from the teens sprawled casually on their towels as we trudged past, our flip-flops kicking up those goofy rooster tails of sand behind us. I used to glance like that.
And no matter all the precautions - the layers of towels, the playpen, the umbrella, the sunblock glopped on by the trowel load - by the time we'd finish setting up, we'd have a hot-pink baby chomping on a sandy pacifier. We'd drive a half hour, take 20 minutes to set up everything, stay all of 45 minutes, take another 20 minutes to take everything down and pack it, and drive the half hour back home again.
I missed the beach. We had moved here in part to be near the water. Only being able to see it an hour at a time was torture.
Worse yet, my ankles kept getting sunburned.
But our daughter got older, as daughters generally do. And as she grew, our beach-going load shrank. First we lost the playpen. Then the diaper bag. Then the umbrella. Eventually we whittled our way down to one bag that we leave in the car all summer.
Oh, sure, we picked up boogie boards and beach chairs along the way, for fun and comfort. But even the young people carry these. Standard equipment.
This year, though, we've taken a big step in the form of a little chair. A kid-size beach chair. It belongs to our daughter. A recent birthday present.
It represents a sandy step toward beach freedom for my wife and me. You see, the deal is that if our daughter wants a chair, she has to carry it herself. She's old enough and big enough to pull her own beach weight now.
Ahh, it's like the good old days. My wife and I are back to just bringing along our own stuff.
If you don't count the garden trowels to dig in the sand. Or the snacks to keep down the hungry baying of daughter and her friends. Or the requisite sunblock to keep her tender skin from cooking much past medium-rare.
And, you know, when you think about it, a cooler would make sense, so we could bring along cold drinks and fruit to replace vital body fluids lost in the heat. No sense suffering from thirst on what's supposed to be a fun visit to the beach.
And now and then I think that an umbrella would be nice, too, just for the occasional respite from the sun, or to hang wet towels out of the sand.
Now, if I could just find something to put on these ankles. . . . ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Matt Bowers
by CNB