A Sunny Tradition

When it is cold and gray outside, I enjoy warmer memories as I sit bundled up in a huge housecoat with furry houseslippers on my feet.

I was raised about an hour's drive from St Augustine and the beach-- which is where our family went to celebrate birthdays, Labor Day and Memorial Day. Grandma and Grandpa, aunts and uncles, cousins galore...we all converged on the beach with glad shouts, racing to be the first one to touch the salty water. Mama looked beautiful in her black bathing suit with her hair free and wild in the wind. Cousins chased us up and down the endless expanse of sand. We ate sandwiches with grit in every bite as if the grit were a special ingredient to mark the occasion. Those holidays seem close to heaven in my memory.

Is there anything better than a day at the beach? The tide came in. The tide went out. The waves reminded us all day long that everything changes, in and out, in and out. Our castles were washed away and we enjoyed watching them fall, dissolving, as much as we had enjoyed building them. We all wore festive sun-burn by the end of the day since this was prior to the time when we started packing sun block protection in our beach bags. We knew it was time to go home when we felt that tight cold feeling on our shoulders, when our cheeks were sizzling.

I remember riding home in the back of our station wagon, stacked like a log among my brothers as we alternately slept and stared out at the night sky above us. We always woke up for a treat at the Dairy Queen. Mama and Daddy sang in the front seat. If there were troubles in our lives, they were set aside for the day.

If I cannot go to Florida today, the next best thing is to take a trip into my memories and relax into its warmth. I had no idea back then, digging a hole with a brightly colored plastic shovel, how special those moments were. How rare. I wonder what I will be doing this holiday season that will one day show up in my warmest and favorite memories.