Sun and Sand

Maine in May. Sweaters are a good idea, the wind off the water cool and damp, the sun pretending to summertime warmth, luring the unsuspecting out ill-prepared and underdressed. Two weeks ago, the beaches nearly deserted, but now, the Official Beginning of Summer, the cars in the small parking lot are more numerous and show license plates from away-- New Hampsire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida. Walking down oceanside pathways still muddy from April Showers that have pelted down nearly the entire month of May, beach peas already starting to pop out, thorny beach roses waiting on either side to scratch the unwary clad in shorts with their goose-bumped legs. The sky finally blue and clear, the miracle of the high pressure system, the ocean nearly calm, so flat that now and again cat's paw ripples give warning to a fresh gust of chilling air... Sunday or not, three-day holiday or not, lobster boats laden with hundreds of lobster pots head out to deeper water, the men bundled up and wearing foul weather gear as tourists with binoculars and cotton shirts with floral designs watch them move from the bay out to sea.
Dogs and small children don't understand the water is still too cold to venture into, and they swim and splash, laugh and bark and chase balls again and again, parents hudled on the beach, sitting in folding chairs and calling out unheard words of caution and encouragement. The tide comes gradually in, and the children begin to vanish, the water first only ankle high, then up to their knees and finally, with the sun nearly ready to duck below treeline, waist high. Parents call their children, it's time to go, time to go, but they can't be heard over the laughing and the sounds of stones being cast into the water to make kerplopping splashes. Dogs, their hearing better, or perhaps just better behaved, come when called, but then shake the water off their fur, drenching their owners, and sometimes hapless noncombatants. The children finally turn, and run out of the water,suddenly cold and asking for towels, dry pants, fresh shirts, new socks. Changed, they tumble tired into cars, the children smelling of salt and seaweed, the dogs smelling of the need to open the car windows. No longer concentrating on drenching one another, the children assert they are starving, famished, and clammor for food, anything as long as it's there, now.
The drive to the beach seemed to take forever, and the ride home goes by in a flash. More clothes, more towels, washing up and then food,"Oh, that was fun," they all say, "when can we go again?"