A Day In The Life

I went to the beach yesterday. Some days when I am there memories of my childhood summers drift into my consciousness, brought on by the smell of the wet early morning sand, a child playing in the surf, the feel of the spray coming off the ocean. As a child my family vacationed at the home of my grandparents on Long Island, NY, for two weeks every summer. Our days were spent at the beach, my mother filling the plaid cooler with tuna fish sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and a thermos of lemonade. We would leave for the ocean early morning and not return until four in the afternoon. My father taught us how to bob in the ocean waves, turning our backs to the incoming waves so they would not knock us down, but instead allow us to jump them or glide into shore on their crest.

He climbed the enormous dunes with us, dunes that are long since gone from storms and erosion. We would hold hands as we ran down, shrieking with delight as the sand parted beneath our feet allowing us to run with a feeling of weightlessness.

I thought of my brother today, gone now six years. No crystal ball to tell us what each of our lives would turn out to be. Childhood allowing us to live in the moment, greet each day with whatever was handed to us, not thinking beyond the present.

It surprises me how vivid my memories are these 50 some odd years later, how important those summer days must have been that I can still picture so many of them so clearly. Our lives are filled with moments we don’t know will remain ingrained so within us, until that something allows them to resurface once again.