Time to Cry Tuesday – The Beach

Yes, I am back. And after quite a long break I have decided to blog regularly again. I am not quite sure why I stopped, probably a little burnout and a lot busy. But I missed it, and hopefully you did too.

Here goes. Funny that I chose to come back on a Tuesday…

The beach. If you know me, my definition is not that place you go in the summer or on vacation. Sure, those are nice, but the beach is part of my soul. For my kind, off season beach is as enchanting as on.

As you know, Sandy beat the crap out of a lot of places in the Northeast.  The greatest victims were the beach communities. And with that she took a piece of many of us that is hard to reconcile.

Long Beach, NY. City by the Sea. To me, this is not just a town by the ocean. It is that part of me that threads itself through the fabric of my life. A constant.

It is 3 little sunburnt girl cousins in an outdoor shower of their Nana’s house, giggling and screaming after a long day in the sand and surf. It is those same little girls running barefoot to the stores ‘Around the Corner’ to buy candy, feeling the freedom that only a small beach town can offer a child. It is the entire extended family spending weekends together. It is the teenager who hitch-hiked to the beach in the off season with her friends, not because she did not have bus money, but because it was part of the adventure. It is under the boardwalk and all the experiments and rights of passage that happen in that magical space that are better left untold. It is new loves and old ones. It is my first summer as a mom, dragging that stroller and nursing that little baby non-stop under the shade of a beach towel. It’s a little boy on a skim board till it is almost dark. It is beach club cabanas and showered kids falling sleep on the car ride home. It is the boardwalk – that poor ravaged soul – where we took our 3 generation stroll every Friday after Thanksgiving for the past 25 years. And long walks on that same boardwalk to think something through or just calm down and BE.

It is where my family always goes to feel better. No matter what ails you, a little salt air and sea breeze is the best cure.

It is the place that never fails me when I am suffering. That great majestic soother.

So many have lost so much there, it is heartbreaking to comprehend. And it seems more than a little self-indulgent to speak of this type of loss in the shadow of shattered lives.

But anyone who grew up in those parts – or any beach community – will nod their heads and indulge me these thoughts. For you will understand that sometimes a place is more a part of you than you ever realized.

Let the rebuilding began.