Chicken Soup for the Beach Lover's Soul Read online

  George and his brother, Harry, were golden retrievers. You never saw one without the other, whether they were crashing through tall saw grass or chasing bait-stealing herons off neighboring wharves. When they did get separated, Harry would bark until George found him. We all loved those dogs like they were our own, but they really belonged to an old salt known to everyone as the Captain.

  One afternoon during this particular summer, Harry and George laid down for a nap under some hydrangea bushes. After an hour or so, Harry woke up, but George didn’t. All of the children, most of the mothers, and even a few of the fathers could be seen sniffling back the tears when they heard Harry barking for his brother. The Captain was almost as pitiful as Harry, who finally gave up barking altogether. But the worst of it was that when he quit barking, he also stopped eating. He wouldn’t touch dog food, ignored his favorite doggie treats, even turned his nose up at a cheeseburger.

  We were so worried that on the fifth night of Harry’s fast, as we ate our supper of fried speckled trout, corn steaming on the cob, and fresh tomatoes, I asked Mama what to do. She said to pray for an angel to help Harry.

  That night I lay in bed under the slumber-inducing, back-and-forth breeze of an oscillating fan and pondered Harry’s plight. I was pretty sure that angels only dealt with people, and I had certainly never heard of them involving themselves in dogs’ problems. But just in case, I prayed myself to sleep.

  The next morning after breakfast Mama gave me a sausage with instructions to take it to Harry. I found him and the Captain sitting on the end of their wharf. I waved the sausage under Harry’s nose, but he didn’t blink. There’s never an angel around when you need one, I thought. Harry got up and started toward the house. His huge head was so low it almost dragged on the wharf boards, and I could tell he was weak from not eating. The Captain shook his old head and sighed.

  A sudden splash made us turn out of habit to see what kind of fish it was. But the smiling face of a dolphin broke the dark water, and even the Captain had to smile back at her. The dolphin made a little dolphin squeak. A deep growl made me look up toward the house. Harry was on the deck, his ears all perked up. The dolphin rolled and splashed like they do, then did something you see trained dolphins do, but rarely get to see done by your average bay dolphin. Whoosh! Up she went like a rocket, silver and shining against the blue of summer sky. The Captain and I were clapping and cheering we were so overcome with the sight. The next thing I knew, Harry came flying down the wharf, barking his big golden head off. When he was finally quiet, the dolphin looked the dog straight in the eye, said something in Dolphin, and swam away.

  In the excitement, I had dropped Mama’s sausage. Harry gobbled it up. The Captain and I took him back to the house and fed him a giant bowl of dog food, then loaded him up with doggie treats.

  The next morning Harry was waiting, and sure enough, the dolphin came by. She blew air out of the top of her shining gray head and smiled her dolphin smile. Harry began to bark like he had the day before and got a quick dolphin reply. Then off she went, the smiling silver rocket.

  From then on, for as long as I can remember, the dolphin stopped by to see Harry every day. My sister decided that this qualified the dolphin as a pet and decided to name her Fishy. But I had a better name. I called her Angel.

  Margaret P. Cunningham

  Summers at Rockaway Beach

  Goodness is uneventful. It does not flash; it glows.

  David Grayson

  If you spend any length of time at the beach you acquire stories. But the beach is not a story; it’s an experience. Time at the beach affects people’s lives. My dad affected people’s lives at the beach.

  In the late sixties and early seventies my dad would take his vacation during the month of August because the waters off of Rockaway Beach, in New York, would finally warm up. We would spend anywhere from three to five days a week on the beach. We would never go on the weekends or on a holiday because of how crowded it was, but we would go most days during the week. My dad would take me, my older brothers (Gene by twelve years and Eddie by six years), and one or two of their friends.

  It was funny. Dad told everyone he would take other kids on the block, but they had organized it themselves. They had to make sure everyone had a turn, and the rule was “no fighting” or neither person would go to the beach.

  One day the battery on the car was dead.

  “Sorry, boys, no beach today. I’ll get a battery this afternoon, and we will go to the beach tomorrow,” said Dad.

  One of the boys sitting on the front steps to the house, with his towel and lunch in tow, said, “Mr. Mac, does that mean we lose our turn, or does everyone get pushed back a day?”

  Dad turned around and saw the look on this kid’s face and went right away to get a new battery and head to the beach. “Better late to the beach than not going at all,” he said.

  We got to the beach by ten in the morning. My dad was very fair-skinned and liked to arrive early. We would float, swim, and “ride the waves,” our phrase for body surfing. Around twelve or twelve-thirty, Dad called us out of the water. He set us up with sandwiches, chips or cookies, and ice tea. He told us we could play cards or catch with a rubber ball. He then went in the water and swam from 121st Street to 98th Street and walked back. During the walk back he passed many of the kids from the neighborhood. He knew more about who was doing what from those walks on the beach. Many times some of the kids walked and talked with him for a while. It never seemed to fail; he always knew what was happening in the neighborhood.

  Now this probably does not seem all that special. But here is how the beach affects lives. We had all grown up, and my mom and dad had retired. One of the boys came back to the block to visit his mother and father, and he had his infant daughter with him. My mom and dad were so happy to see him and his baby girl. As he walked out of the house, the young man said, “This is the man I’ll think about when I teach you to swim.” His voice cracked with emotion as he quickly walked out of the house. I asked my dad if he heard what he said. He said no, but I think he did.

  A few years later my dad passed away. The same man could not bring himself to come to my dad’s funeral. But he was waiting. The funeral procession drove by the house once before heading off to the cemetery. There he was, waiting. He ran with the procession, down the block, like a child racing his parent’s car. He stopped, and I could see tears on his face.

  You never know who or what affects people’s lives. But I know the beach had a lasting impact on at least a few lives.

  Patrick McDonnell

  Oysterfest in Rockport, Texas

  The trip to the beach had been a long one—and difficult and hilarious and warm and lonely—and I cried the whole way there. Now it was over. So much was over. A lifetime spent and done, and now the future seemed reflected in the dark sea at our feet.

  Standing on the beach, waiting in the night, thankful that we had survived—our marriage, our love—to become something we never imagined; the sound of waves lapping the shore, searching endlessly for wounds new and old, anxious to apply its salty balm in painful but effective healing.

  We shivered there on the beach, where we thought no one else would be, but we were not alone. Others had traveled there too, to watch the stars and await the promised celebration, their voices drifting toward us with the wind. Now we watched the boat lights in the bay, wondering if they were part of the show, and how long would we have to wait for the fireworks to begin.

  The wind pushed us closer together, gently biting exposed skin, and we huddled side by side. I had forgotten my jacket and he had not, and I wondered vaguely at the dark blue fleece that seemed familiar, but too large, for him—deciding it to be a leftover from the restaurant we had recently sold, a forgotten take-out container, no longer wanted, and did not question its origins as he wrapped his arms around mine, enfolding me in his warmth.

  The music from the festival played behind us; the oompahs and twangs of tubas and steel guitars mi
xed with the carnival ride screams and party laughter from the dance floor. We had been a part of that, just moments before, souvenir sacks crumpled into the pockets of the hooded fleece jacket, but now we stood apart and knew that while we could go back, we wouldn’t. It was quieter where we were now and the dark hid our faces.

  The wind blew colder as we waited for the show to start. Now we turned and faced each other so that he blocked the wind, then pushing me away, he opened the over-sized jacket and pulled me inside, zipping it up around us. We laughed at what a funny sight we must be, in the dark, on the beach, zipped up together in the dark blue fleece jacket, waiting for the fireworks show to begin, trying not to stumble as we sank into the sand. Wouldn’t the children be embarrassed to see us? Then he said, “I’ll tell you something, but it’ll make you cry.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “This is your daddy’s jacket.”

  And he was right. It made me cry to remember where I had seen this jacket before, why it was familiar; on Daddy’s shoulders in the living room where he always felt cold, then draped over the walker he hated having to use, and finally, laid across the back of the wheelchair that had gone back to the rental store after he died and Mom had no more use for it.

  “Daddy loved the beach,” I said.

  And then I was not the only one crying, as he remembered, too, and missed the man who had loved us both so well and for so long. Hugging each other, we knew that we were not alone, standing on that windy beach in the dark. He was with us. And as the salt water sprayed our faces, I licked my lips and wondered whose tears I tasted.

  Sally Clark

  Searching for Scott

  I keep expecting to see Scott’s head and shoulders appear over the beach dune, the way they would if he were on his way down to our chairs on the sand. The way they did every summer for two decades, and last summer at this time. The way they never will again.

  This beach trip is the first without him, and the first of the annual family gatherings that we are remaking in the wake of his loss. Soon will come Thanksgiving, then Christmas. Then, the year will turn and we’ll face next Easter Sunday, the one-year anniversary of his suicide.

  I know exactly where we were at the moment Scott put his car in a closed garage and engaged the ignition. We were miles away, saying good-bye after a holiday weekend with family. We didn’t know as we drove past the white clapboard country church, where congregants were amassing to celebrate rebirth, that Scott was in his final desperation.

  We didn’t find out until the next day, after Scott hadn’t shown up for work and his boss went to find him. He feared what the rest of us soon came to know; Scott had destroyed himself before the world he perceived as hostile had a chance to.

  This man, who was a musician, a father, a husband, a friend, and my husband’s only brother, constantly dared life to hurt him. Scott would fling his body into the roughest ocean waves and surf barebellied to shore until he scraped himself on the sand. He took few precautions.

  His outward bravado masked his private insecurity. Few guessed how fragile Scott actually was.

  And then came the Monday after Easter, and phone calls ricocheted through the family, catapulting a routine weekday into a time out of time. Scott was thirty-seven years old and left two sons under the age of six and a wife whose own mourning was put aside to make sure the boys’ world remained intact.

  The first blurry hours consisted of unexpected arrangements and hopeful ideas. People arrived in disbelief and gradually became mourners who had to be fed. In the cold light of the supermarket, I allowed Scott’s five-year-old to pick whatever cookies he liked best, dumbly believing his favorite treat would make everything all better.

  And later, from the quiet isolation that insulates pain, Scott’s mother turned to me and offered, “Of course, we’ll go to the beach.”

  No surprise, really. Scott was his best self on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There he crafted the life that suited him. The rhythm of a town that filled in the summer and emptied in the fall, the inner circle of residents who make the strand their home in every season, a relaxed life based on the vagaries of catching fish in the surf. These were the best of Scott.

  He introduced the rest of us to the place, and it became the summer destination we looked forward to all year.

  But time moved Scott away from North Carolina. His twenties gave way to his thirties and a mortgage, children, and a career with challenges that intensified as his responsibilities grew. He gave hints that he was in trouble, and told it outright to a few people. But he gave no clue to his brother or his mother; he didn’t tell his father. And then, on his very first effort to die, he was gone.

  HAWAII

  Poipu, Kauai

  HAWAII

  Poipu, Kauai

  Summer came, and as always, we headed for South Nags Head. I looked for Scott in the blue sky, the ocean, the air. He was already so present in the silences that punctuated conversations, the spaces in a house missing an important resident, the empty chair by the window where he had been photographed the summer before.

  Meanwhile for the children, it was summer vacation. They fell on the bed to wrestle with each other, jumped up and down, watched videos, and stayed up late. For them, life was a matter of what was happening today, right now. It was the lesson we adults were struggling to learn.

  There were still great meals to be made and shared, days lengthened by a languid arc of the sun, walks along the shoreline that might result in finding an entire unbroken pink whelk.

  We were transfigured, scarred, healing into a new unit, minus Scott. This was how it was going to be; he was never coming back. There was no reason to look for him anymore.

  Still, we gaped when a cover of splendid, tall white clouds moved in one afternoon at the end of our trip. Minutes earlier, the sky had been an unbroken August blue. Massed around a perfect opening, they permitted an intense ray of yellow sunshine to fall in a solid, focused beam.

  We all turned our faces up. I sat down, stunned by the purity of the light. For a moment, heaven opened to us.

  Nobody said anything about Scott. And there he was.

  Maggie Wolff Peterson

  Reflected in a Smile

  Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.

  Emily Dickenson

  The sun glowed high in the sky as Mom sat on the balcony overlooking the beach with that forlorn expression on her face. My heart ached to see her that way. Tomorrow she would leave.

  Earlier that day, all six of us played on the beach. David and I chased the three little ones, while Mom sat in a chair and watched her grandchildren explore the wonders of their first beach experience.

  Would she ever be truly happy again? Would we ever see joy reflected in her smile once more?

  The baby toddled to the water’s edge and plopped into the sand with a splash. He scooped up fistfuls of wet sand and laughed when he threw them back into the water.

  Our daughter, the oldest at five, jumped waves with her daddy in water no higher than her belly button. With her small hand in his, she giggled with delight as each wave rolled in and gently crashed along the shoreline.

  Mom watched silently with the hint of a forced smile.

  Dad wasn’t supposed to die. We were all supposed to come to the beach together. After the funeral, Mom took a break from legal matters to vacation with us for a few days. I rode up with her, and David brought the kids down by himself—a twelve-hour drive with children that young.

  Josh, the four-year-old, suddenly spied a flock of seagulls. He had never seen these creatures before and was totally fascinated with them. My son, who needed to experience everything for himself, scampered after the birds to get a closer look.

  The birds at first scurried away from the oncoming charge. Josh slowed momentarily when he saw they were running from him. He was not dissuaded and decided to try again and darted after those birds like a bullet
. The seagulls took to the air, landing several feet away. Josh ran as fast as his little legs could carry him—a new destination, but the same goal. He was determined to get one of those birds.

  That’s when I heard it. While the game repeated itself, I heard Mom laugh. Although briefly, she did laugh at the funny sight of a boy chasing birds he’d surely never catch.

  The sound reminded me of our frequent trips to the beach when I was young. Dad loved it there. Often we’d find him early in the morning or late in the evening sitting on the deck watching and listening. That’s where we found Mom most of the time on this trip.

  “Picture time!” I called, opening the sliding glass door for the three bundles to rush into Grandma Mongonk’s arms.

  She gathered the brood into her lap and around the chair. All three kids and their grandma smiled. Not the forced smile from the past week of pain, but a smile of hope. Better days would come, and they were beginning here at the beach in the reflection of a smile.

  Paula F. Blevins

  A Toast to a Brighter Life

  Once again it is time to pack up the car and travel twelve hours to the beach. We have made this trip many times. This year the ocean serves a different purpose. The night is beautiful, and the sun is just starting to set in the western sky. I gather my family and friends and tell them it is time for us to take our first night beach walk. In my right hand I am carrying a bag. My girlfriend is bringing along a cooler, and my husband has a large rock in his hands. I take the lead—family and friends are walking toward the fishing pier. The sand feels wonderful beneath our feet. The waves are clapping against the shore, and the stars are beginning to shine. Our destination is in sight. We watch the fishermen unloading their gear in hopes of catching the big one. Fishing is not what we intend to do on the pier. We all pay our fifty cents and start the long walk out to the very end of the pier. We feel the wooden planks beneath our sandaled feet. Our gathering awaits my next move. I open the bag that contains items that have consumed me and my family this past year. My husband places the large rock in the bag. With trembling hands and tears in my eyes I drop the bag into the ocean. I hear the splash of the water as the bag starts to drop to the ocean floor. I do not move until I know that the bag rests deep within the ocean to remain there forever. Slowly I turn to my family and friends who have accompanied me on this mission. The words “I hate cancer” come out of my mouth. One year ago the demon of breast cancer invaded my life. Now all of the cancer literature, my wig, and other reminders of cancer lie on the ocean floor. Surgery, chemo, and radiation gone. Stay on that ocean floor forever, you demon of cancer. I hate you! The sun sets for the day, the ocean waves clap all around the wooden pier. The night sky fills with beautiful twinkling stars. The stars seem much brighter tonight. The cooler is now open, and someone pours champagne into paper cups. We raise our paper cups and toast to a beautiful night—a night that will always be remembered as the night cancer was laid to rest on the ocean floor. Gone is the day, gone is breast cancer. Let the vacation of fun begin. Our mission—accomplished!