Beach

I hate the beach.

My friend Brooke says it’s her favorite place because she gets to relax and to read and to let the world just peel away from her like bark from a birch tree. There was a time I would agree, looking out over the horizon and feeling the wind sweep across my face and listening to the cadence of the sea coming in to greet me. Everything about it makes you want to stay forever.

Almost everything.

Going to the beach starts out well enough. The first weekend of every June we squeeze everything into the van – towels and blankets and pails and shovels and chairs and snacks and sunscreen. Four kids. Tricia and I. Two-and-a-half hours away is a county park on Isle of Palms that has the softest sand. It never burns your feet no matter how hot it gets outside. I don’t know how this works - it just does. Muluken says it’s because we’re boys and we’re tough but I remind him that his mother and sisters are girls and they’re tough too. He doesn’t look convinced and flexes his tiny brown muscles in protest.

Ty reacts to the beach like a June bug reacts to light. He runs around, wildly bouncing off things. Off people. We try our best to reel him in but our arms are full of bags and coolers so for this one moment – this one day – he gets to act like a child. After a year of time-outs he probably deserves at least as much.

We find a spot to drop our stuff. It has to be close enough to the waterline so that we can see it from the surf yet not so close that we will have to retreat from the rising tide. Tricia says I obsess over the spot too much. She says I’m like an old man circling the mall parking lot in search of the perfect spot by the door. I couldn’t really say, but it is important to me. I do take it seriously.

The first thing Harper does is to grab her boogie board and head off toward the water. The board has a big picture of Dora on it and it’s really too babyish for an eight year old but she doesn’t seem to mind. It’s functional and she knows how hard it is to find money to replace the things that aren’t broken. She bounds through the waves trying to get past the breakers but her frame is small and she has the legs of a reader. She’s knocked to the ground numerous times before she finally wrestles her way to calmer waters. Despite the effort, a smile as wide as a Wal-Mart parking lot spreads across her face and she squeals uncontrollably. She has been waiting for this exact moment all year long.

Tricia and I make our way down to the water to take this all in. By this point Muluken and Ty have joined their big sister while Ainlsey – sweet, little Ainsley – dances around us begging to search for seashells. Not liking to get her face wet, she prefers to stay on dry land. Tricia takes her hand and together they head off toward the pier in search of half-buried treasures.

I breathe in all that salty air and sunshine and then I run out to join the kids. And that’s how the beach starts.

Not a bad start.

But not long after the morning shadows disappear everything changes. My heart somehow knows before my eyes do. I look out at the water. And I look out across the beach. And I count three heads. Just three heads. When there should be four.

And now, I hate the beach.

I hate the beach because when I yell for Tricia I can see that she’s already noticed. She’s looking around and every ounce of blood has drained from her cheeks and her knuckles are bone white as she clenches the sides of her swimsuit. She looks at me and says something I can’t hear. Suddenly I’m very aware of all the noise. And all the people.

I run down to the water as Tricia makes her way across the sand. I glance back over my shoulder hoping to see her signal to me that everything’s okay – that she has found what, at this moment in time, I need to see more than anything else in the entire world. But she hasn’t. I can see that she’s screaming now, moving from towel to towel, person to person, pleading with them to help. But no one does because they don’t understand. No one understands. No one but us. And among all these people I suddenly feel alone.

I turn back to the water and there are so many bodies and the sun is so bright that I can barely make sense of what I’m seeing. I move out further to get a better view. The waves crash down on me so as to make me turn away -but I refuse to. The saltwater stings my eyes and my feet betray me as I fall back and I’m surrounded now by nothing but muddled sounds and murky water and more than at any other point in my life I feel completely out of control.

Tricia gathers up the other three kids and asks them if they’ve seen anything. They laugh at her because they think this is some kind of trick or joke and they don’t understand the seriousness of the situation. They don’t understand what’s at stake. She orders them back to our blanket because she doesn’t have the time to make them understand. Or the heart.

She tells me to go get the lifeguard.

The lifeguard smiles at me and calmly climbs down from her chair. She looks to be all of about nineteen years old and flips her hair from her face as she reaches back to grab a radio. I want to scream: How can you be so calm? She asks a few questions of which I try to answer but I can’t concentrate. My mind is racing. I’m scared and angry and the lifeguard is still acting casually as if this type of thing happens every day. Every day to some kid. But this isn’t just some kid. It’s mine.

She gets on her walkie and begins talking to someone else. I look down the beach to see if one of the other lifeguards is beginning to move or to look toward us. Finally, I see one of them signal to her. She tells me that she has put out an alert and that I need to backtrack through all the places we’ve been. I’m happy to have been given an instruction. Happy to have someone else who knows.

I turn to go find Tricia and see immediately that she is standing at the water’s edge - tears streaming down her face, her heart beating through the purple diamonds that line her swimsuit.

Her entire face is swollen.

She drops to her knees. And she screams.

A numbness falls over me like I’ve never felt before and my heart is pounding and pounding and pounding and I hate the beach.

But then… I see her reach out. Out toward the sea and a wide smile washes over her face, erasing the terror. I realize now that the screams were not of pain, but of joy.

She wraps her arms around a confused set of shoulders that have waded in through the pools of water left from the tide. She pulls those shoulders in to her tightly and squeezes them with all the strength she has left.

I run over and I grab hold of both of them and we sit that way for a very long time.

Afraid to let go.

I look out over their heads at the vast blue ocean and see something I had never noticed before and I wonder: What if…?

And now, I hate the beach.