Staring at the Sea

Robert Moses Beach with my mom, July 2010

When I was growing up on Long Island, just 5 miles from the LI Sound to the north and 15 miles from the ocean to the south*, I liked the sea.  I associated it with fun and freedom and summertime, with the feeling of the endless open time ahead after school lets out for summer break.  The beach was for family days of swimming and building sand castles, of Fourth of July cookouts, and that one strange camping trip out on Montauk Point with neighbors and family friends and an unfortunate garbage-can-sized pot of fresh boiling lobsters.  Later, in high school, the ocean became a destination for teenage freedom.  A place for Steve Miller Band and Billy Joel (I'm not going to justify myself) concerts at the Jones Beach theater, which juts out over the ocean, creating the effect of watching the performer against the backdrop of the expansive dark ocean behind the stage.  A day for playing in the high waves with a group of friends, wearing an ill-advised fire-engine red bikini that half disappeared in the undertow.  And, more happily, a spot for an especially sweet night watching fireworks from a blanket on the sand with a high school boyfriend.

I always liked the beach, but for whatever reason, I wasn't in love.  Maybe I took it for granted.  But whenever I'm near the ocean now, especially in the years since I've been living in the Midwest, I know was mistaken.

*An admittedly patronizing but surprisingly necessary geography lesson for you non-NY readers - yes, Long Island is indeed an island.

                  I too am but a trail of drift and debris, 
                     I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped island. 

– Walt Whitman, As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life