I am a fan of beaches...or maybe it is better to say I am a fan of the ocean and its byproducts. I can do without the glaring sun, the sunburns, the sand in my bathing suit, and throngs of people. I love a good brooding beach, the kind that writers dream about, that makes you want to walk for miles mesmorized by the sound of crashing waves and seagulls. The kind of beach that requires a sweater.
This is Seabrook Beach in New Hampshire. One summer when I was 11 my mom and her boyfriend Tony took me with them to spend the week. It was an amazing time. I spent long days walking the beach, playing with kids, making sand castles, and picking shells that I would not be able to take home with me.
I had my first ever summer love. That summer they were dredging out an area of the shore and we sat on the jetty and watched thousands of gallons of ocean floor sand pile up on the beach. There were loads of nasty looking creatures and mystical giant purple sea cucumbers that the workers would pull out with their gloves so we could see them.
This was also the same summer that my crush and I went "rafting" on our new Budweiser rafts being shy and making twinkly eyed chatter at one another as we drifted out on the current into the ocean. His mother became a speck on the beach and we worked hard to try and swim back to shore without drowning. I was scared to death to lose the rafts my mother had just bought despite keeping them hindered our ability to swim. I didn't find out until my mother saved us by swimming out that his mother did not know how to swim and was afraid of the ocean.
I felt at home there cradled in the immensity of the ocean knowing it was filled with wonders and dangers and possibility. I have thought of that beach every summer for the last 30 years. I have never been back. I think it is time.
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