The beach: a retrospective at 46
40 years ago: Go to the beach, play in the sand, splash in the waves, build a castle, find shells, and be protected from the sun by careful parents. Revel in the sand. Have no concept of the work involved to provide the experience. Find joy in everything.
30 years ago: Go to the beach, horse around, occasionally annoy others, and get way too much sun by accident. Take the sand for granted. Remain blissfully ignorant of dangers and expenses alike. Remain naively unaware of all that could have gone wrong, but didn’t, due perhaps to the presence of angels. Derive joy principally from camaraderie among peers. Express insufficient gratitude in many directions.
20 years ago: Go to the beach without much in tow, drink too many things with umbrellas in them, and get too much sun on purpose. Have fleeting moments of satisfaction interspersed by stretches of nagging anxiety. Gradually become aware of a subtle but conspicuous absence of joy; vaguely recognize its connection to a default loneliness. After enough drinks, gain keen powers of observation that unleash silent interior melodrama while revealing poetic metaphors for the newly-understood quarter life crisis in the sand, waves, and wind. Ruefully cope with sunburn as a sort of manifest shame, view it as a cosmic message to shape up. Stare into the distance, perched at a seaside bar amidst a fortress of solitude. Deny anything being wrong. Haul things through the hot sand as a sort of penance.
10 years ago: Go to the beach, unload many, many heavy things painstakingly loaded into a conveyance. Carry many heavy things long distances over hot sand. Dedicate seventeen minutes to sunscreen application. Swim a bit, drink coffee, and alternate wrangling young kids with tight-deadline remote work. Consume sand amidst sandwiches, chuckling at the irony. Smile at vague memories of life and silly selfish problems that used to matter before marriage and children. Rediscover joy through sharing the experience with family, but reconcile it with deep and interminable exhaustion. Maintain heightened diligence, scan the horizon for sharks and assholes, and do not really relax. Begin to realize a changing relationship with sand. Fondly recall loneliness for the distant memory it has become. Carry many, many things long distances back over hot sand. Cope with others’ sunburn.
Now: go to the beach. Carry considerably fewer things over hot sand, with help from growing children. Get a few minutes of sun, find a place in the shade, drink some juice, tolerate the sand, smile at kids having fun, join them periodically but not for too long, take action to prevent disasters but otherwise stay out of the way, confidently delay working, amicably accept the sand in the sandwich, read something unimportant, and confidently share supervisory duties with bride or other trusted adults so as to facilitate a nap if possible. Become acutely aware of natural beauty. Notice things anew, recalling they were sources of wonder in childhood. Smile at the irony of that. Listen to the sounds of the waves and the laughter of children with a joy so firmly established that even rainy weather can’t wash it away.
Fall even more deeply in love with the beauty of the world, and breathe a prayer of gratitude for the gift of being in it.
Leave content and free of sunburn. On the way to the car, realize that others came to these realizations years ago. And that someday, children will grow into them.
Haul very little over hot sand, kick it out of sandals, and bid it a fond farewell until next time.