Sand, Sand, Sand

We’re piled into Nate’s mini-van, and he’s blasting Built to Spill. The windows are down so between the air whipping past on the highway and the music, it’s hard to hear each other. I’m in the backseat, leaned up against Ashley as I doze. Kaitlin and Roger are in front of us, staring out the windows, and Warren’s in the passenger seat, talking to Nate about kung-fu. Somewhere ahead of us, Michael is driving his own beat-up maroon SUV full of people.

It’s about two hours to New Smyrna from Orlando, but it’s our fifth beach trip of the year so we’re all used to it by now. I know what the day holds: parking at the Food Lion and grabbing RC Cola bottles with Lunchables and chips; half of our group will splash into the ocean first while the other half sets up blankets and towels to watch over the coolers; napping until too warm; rinse-off the sand and lingering heat; then a pit stop into Frozen Gold, the ice cream shop where we will inevitably run into another group of high schoolers we know with the same weekend plans.

What I don’t know yet is that seagulls will steal my crackers. Or that I will bury Nate in sand while he naps. Or that someone will dump water from the pier onto our nest of towels, drenching them. Or that Ashley and I will make “tattoos” out of sunscreen while we bake under the Florida sun. I will put a heart in the curve of my hip just above my impossibly low bikini line. Michael will make fun of us; but I also won’t know that in just 3 years, he and I will discover that when he puts his teeth to that same spot, my legs will quiver.

But this isn’t a story about him. They’re just memories. And I’m not reminiscing because of the people or the places or the sensation of lying on warm, soft sand.

I feel old, a little wrung-out. I’m trying to remember how soft everything felt then, not just the sand. I’m thinking about the time before I knew what it was to manipulate or mourn, before we all went our separate ways and found out how stupid we could be. Everything felt easier then, even if it didn’t seem like it at the time.

I don’t go to the beach much anymore. When I stand on a coastline now, I feel like the water is pulling me out and all of my memories rush towards the horizon with it.

Like an unseasonably warm Autumn trip to Daytona Beach, bobbing in the water with Nate again, Ashley again, plus Cate. We talk and tread water, but then I notice Gina and Jessie on the shore, waving frantically. The ocean has pulled us out too far, and their bodies are growing smaller rapidly. It’s a rip current.

Everyone starts swimming parallel to the shore, just like we were taught, but it’s a large current and fifteen minutes in, I am exhausted. I keep struggling but I’ve never been a good swimmer. For a half second, I slip under the water. The salt stings my eyes, but I’m calm now because you can’t feel how strong the waves are when you’re below them. Then Nate grabs my arm and pulls me towards the shore. We watch for Cate and Ashley, who also flounder below view for a few terrifying seconds before crawling back onto the sand.

But there were also the stereo-driven sandy dance parties. The cartwheels across the shore. The small fights and long walks and bobbing on my back with only an endless green-grey beyond. Flirting with a man who invited me to his apartment the next weekend to watch a movie we won’t finish. Drinking beers on the dock and yelling at the seagulls.

Now, I stand in the sea foam and sometimes need to be brought back to reality by a friend who asks what I’m looking at. Other times, I’m alone, holding my shoes in my hand, and wonder if we ever stop regretting how little or how much we cared.

I took Michael to the beach once in January, cold enough even on the coast that we kept our shoes and jackets on. Our relationship had imploded by then and I hadn’t seen him in a month, but he told me he wanted to talk. I, enamored of melodrama and erroneously asserting that I had emotionally moved on, had asked if we could drive to the beach. We sat on a small dune and looked at the waves, wading in our own memories. He told me he wanted to be with someone who had many specific qualities. He had meditated, he had made a list. I asked if he knew someone like that. He said it was me. But I didn’t feel happiness, just victory, and should have known that was a bad sign. Our reunion didn’t last the week.

Because by then, it wasn’t easy, this messy business of living. And it wouldn’t get easier. When I remember, it’s as if I’ve been put through the wash and instead of getting cleaner, I’m just less new.

Then again, like many aging but unforgotten things, I can say I was well-loved.

All those memories, tied up in people who loved me for a suspended bubble of time, aren’t so bad. Like breaking into a hotel pool and being scooped up, thrown high into the air by the arms of people you trust, caught by the sunlight and flying for just a moment before the air takes you and flings you into the cool, blue water.