Rainy Day Ramblings

It’s raining like hell as I sit here writing and has been for the last three days. To add insult to injury, it’s also humid and clammy.

As I sat down this morning at the computer and gazed out at yet another dismal, dreary day, I thought of places I’d rather be.

I used to do this as a kid, too. When we’d had one too many days in the single digits, I’d get in bed and get warm, then start imagining myself at the beach during the coming summer.

Normally, I don’t care much for the hot weather of summer, but the beach is different. I’ve always loved the ocean, and swimming at a lake or a pool just doesn't quite get it.

For the first ten years of my life, I lived a half hour from Newport, Rhode Island. Every summer, my mother took us there three or four times a week. When I close my eyes and imagine, I can almost hear the roar of the surf and the sea gulls overhead, see the waves rolling in, smell the salt water and suntan lotion, taste the tuna and egg salad sandwiches my mother would always bring, and feel the gritty sand between my toes. The sensory experience of those summer days at the beach forty years ago has been indelibly imprinted on my memory.

Food always tasted better at the beach for some reason. Maybe it was the sand that got in the sandwiches that made them taste better, who knows? She’d also bring soda in cans and I remember back then that the cans didn’t have pop tabs, so you had to have a “church key” to open them with.

Years later, after my mother had died and I was in college, I continued to go to the beach. By this time, I was living in New Jersey, and the beach of choice was Wildwood, NJ, about an hour from my apartment.

I remember one summer, my friends and I rented a stuffy attic apartment for a week. The main advantage of these less than luxurious digs was that the apartment house was only two blocks from the ocean. The week passed in a happy blur of drinking, swimming, sleeping, and screwing. One night, I had sex on the beach at night under the moonlight, which is an experience everyone should try at least once.

Now, I’m a five hour drive from the ocean, so I haven’t been to the beach in years. Maybe one of these days…