Family Fun at the Beach

We used to live about 3 hours from the ocean. We loved the ocean. It was a magical place to visit with endless vistas and the power of the sea on constant display. The enormity of it all reminding you of your humanity and the greatness of the universe. Then we moved to the beach and all that changed.

When you visit the beach you take the time to enjoy the natural beauty of it all. You go to the beach prepared to get down with nature, get a little wet, a little sandy, and really enjoy yourself. You get to spend time and slow things down a little. Walking the beach makes you want to live there. You envy those lucky shell hounds that get to spend time on it every day.

This was our perception when an opportunity came up for us to move to the coast we had visited for so long. Obviously we would take advantage of the ocean and go for walks in the surf every day collecting shells and pretty rocks. Our family would grow closer and our lives would be perfect because we would live by the beach. To quote my daughters: “Whatever.”

When you live near something cool it just becomes something you live by. You still have to go to work every day and you still have to mow the lawn and clean the house and blah blah blah. You finally decide to take advantage of the beach that’s practically in your back yard so you pack up all the kids and go. You know…just for a walk.

Nobody is wearing a swimsuit or anything. We’re just going for a walk right? So you and the kids are walking on the beach on a cool and blustery day. Walking in the soft sand watching the beautiful waves roll in.

Then, after about five seconds everyone realizes that the soft sand is really hard to walk in. It’s like walking through molasses, with swim fins on. So you move up to the packed wet sand next to the beautiful crashing waves and the walking and perfect family time continues.

Then, after another blissful five seconds a good sized wave sneaks up on you and everyone has to run away to avoid getting their shoes wet. “Wow, that was fun.” Everyone thinks. “That beautiful slightly large wave tried to get our shoes wet. But we beat it to dry ground. Aren’t we clever?” And eventually you or a child person voices or does what everyone else is thinking, “Let's do it again.” And in the next few minutes the shoes are off and the pant cuffs are rolled up and the happy, playful children are joyously running and dancing in the beautiful waves while mom and dad hold hands and watch one of those rare moments when the children are playing together without drawing blood.

In a peaceful moment when all the children are standing in only three inches of surf and playing so well together, a beautiful monster of a wave secretly forms off shore. Dad, happy but vigilant, watches the wave form and a growing suspicion calmly voices itself. “RUN, RUN, RUN.” Dad calmly screams like a girl while running toward the kids.

As the giant beautiful wave rolls towards the perfect happy beach family, the oldest and the youngest run for dry ground like the dickens. What’s the dickens? I don’t know, but they’re fast.

So now Dad is running toward the giant wave and the six year old twin girls that are looking at him like he’s a moron. By the time the beautiful wave engulfs the girls it’s only three feet high. The problem is, so are they. And they are not surfers.

They look like cabbage patch kids in a washing machine. Arms and legs are spread eagle trying to find the bottom of the beach as they are being swept inland toward Dad at about three hundred miles an hour.

Only a second later the water has mellowed to two feet deep but the twins are still being pushed and rolled and tumbled in toward dry land. They are down the beach from Dad now and he is running after them. Himself wading through the wet two feet of beautiful wave, lifting his legs as high as his head so he can clear the water and reach his girls. (It looks nothing like a sexy lifeguard show.)

He is only four feet away from the closest one now. He can see the look of horror in her face under the water as her wide eyes try to make sense of the tumbling world of wetness and sand. A half second later Dad has reached her and thrusts his arm into the beautiful wave to grab her.

No time for jubilation, they’re twins, two for the price of one. Dad tucks her forty pound frame under one arm like he’s carrying a football, a fully clothed, soaking wet, crying football.

High stepping toward twin number two with water splashing everywhere, the barefoot dad can almost see the ponies in her hair when a lucky tumble throws a foot up and out of the water only a few inches in front of him. He snakes a hand out to grab the girl as the beautiful wave tries to bury her in foamy water again.

His hand closes around an ankle and he pulls straight up into the sky. She breaks free of the water, sputtering and gasping for air, and grabs her dad around the waist. She is cold, wet, and upside down, but she is out of the water.

Dad wades out of the beautiful wave and into the dry sand with one girl under his arm and another hanging upside down from his other arm pointed straight to the sky. It’s almost a decent statue of liberty imitation. “Give me your soaked, your sandy, your tumbled twins yearning to be dry.”

Many days later the last few grains of sand are washed out of the twins’ hair, clothes and bodies are finally warm and dry and we resigned ourselves to watching the beautiful waves from the car. No, we don’t live near the beach anymore.