The Coast, 2013

The weather was warm for two weeks before the rain began again.  A taste of summer as orange popsicle drips down dirty hands and arms that have spent the day romping outside.  And we all really, honestly thought that it had come.  Days spent in the park, soaking up the sun while skidding down slides, followed by evenings with all the windows open, trying to coax a breeze through the house.  It is only May and too good to be true.  Which is why we took off for the beach the first chance we got.

It's important to go to the beach at the beginning of the summer.  When 70 degree days are "peel your clothes off" hot and your toes are freshly pedicured after months of being stuffed into socks and shoes.  Even as they they turn blue as they hit the wet sand, they are too beautiful to put away, and brown-sugar sand kicks up as you run from the waves.  When a person can overlook the gale-force winds forcing sticky salt air into their lungs because there is no rain slicing its way through squinted eye-lids.  This is the season to go to the beach.

Despite its sapphire blue water and shell scattered sand, the Oregon coast is no event that you can hop in the car with a towel, sunblock and swim suit tied on under your shorts and t-shirt and expect to stay the day.  It is a complicated procedure of selecting one complete outfit from each season of the year to fulfill the requirements of beach-going, including comfy clothes for the ride home.


The following is a post to facebook:

Day at the beach ahead of us. Got our swimsuits, our shorts and short-sleeves, our apples for a snack and knife to cut them with, our long pants and long-sleeves, our socks, our jackets, our coats (yes, at the Oregon coast there is a difference between a jacket and a coat), our two strollers, one for shopping and one for beach running, our shoes and barefeet, our hair bling to hold our hair back from the wind and our high hopes for a warm day. Takes two bags.


Alaska wasn't sure about the sand.  She lifted her legs up to avoid being set on the unknown ground of sand being pushed by the wind.  Her toes curled up into her feet and she took a few careful steps before letting loose and gathered sand into her fists to watch as it slowly escaped her palms into the wind.

The water licked her toes and you would never know it was freezing cold.  She chased the waves into the ocean, looking back only for a hand to hold to steady her feet as the water pulled sand out from under her.  And when I say chase, I mean waded up to her little hips until she couldn't go forward any further.  She is a brave girl, a girl who chases with all her strength.

We played til the goosebumps were thick and Alaska was shaking with cold, her eyes still bright and yearning toward the water.  I didn't have the heart to swoop her away from such a good time, but her daddy did and she reached out, screaming for that ocean.

The love broke my heart.  I understood it.  I stood in my own shorts, the ones I had exchanged from pants before getting out of the car.  Handsome Husband had asked, "why" and the most honest answer I could give him was, "I can't go to the beach and stay out of the water."  Even as an adult, the wonderment of the ocean is the same.  The packed sand that becomes near liquid as the water touches it and the ever-beckoning waves call my name on the wind and I answer it with my legs poised, running among the waves.