Beach
Last week I was at the beach and was therefore too busy dancing in the waves to write. It was a glorious week of being disconnected from any regular responsibility other than my children. I know I've written about how much I love the beach before but here it goes again.
I love the ocean. I don't know if it is because I went so often as a kid or if it is just part of who I am but I love water in general and the ocean especially. I find the power of the waves inspiring and I love how it is always changing so it never gets boring; some days the waves are huge (fun!) some days the waves are calm (still fun!) and some days they are just right (super fun!). I love how the water is always moving and going somewhere, pulling or pushing you. I love how beautiful it is when a wave crests and crashes on itself, spraying white bubbles and kicking up sand and shells.
My favorite is getting out just past where they are breaking and wave dancing. This is a sport I invented when I was nine or ten and my sisters were too old to come out and swim with me; they just wanted to sun tan. So I created my own competition and pretended I was a wave dancer performing in front of a large audience and I would rate my wave scores. I would do spins, leaps, dives, and all sorts of other movements that I made up names for and would spend hours out in the waves dancing. On the first day we got to the beach last week, the water was amazing and I was out there with my nine-year-old and one of my best friends and her nine-year-old and we were wave dancing together. It was seriously amazing. I felt like I was nine again as we held hands to leap over waves and as we spun around in circles and acted like dolphins.
Therein lies the magic of the beach. It doesn't ever stop being fun! There are plenty of things I do with my kids that are really only fun for them. Science museums, going to the park, going to the story time at the library, having their friends over and sometimes even the pool is for their enjoyment and often leads to more work for me. Going to the beach is a lot of work (oy the sunscreen!) but it is one of the few times that I get to play like a kid and actually enjoy myself and have as much fun as they do, if not more. Get me out in those ocean waves and I'm no longer a mom with responsibility for the lives of four children and a home and a yard. Thirty years just melt away and I'm a girl who loves to dance in the waves and play and be silly, something I honestly have a hard time doing the older I get.
I was able to have a magical parent moment with each kid during our week. It was so sweet to sit at the edge of the water where the waves would wash up with my three-year-old as he giggled every time a wave covered our legs. We would joke about where our toes went as they got buried deeper and deeper in the sand and throw clumps of wet sand on each other's legs until the wave washed them clean. I took my five-year-old out in the waves and she laughed as waves splashed our faces and I jumped big waves while trying to hold her up out of the water a bit. I cheered on my eight-year-old who was constantly in the water as he caught waves on the boogie board and didn't get upset when he got tossed by a wave. I loved swimming with my nine-year-old doing the very wave-dancing moves I did at her age and my heart about burst with joy at seeing her enjoy it too.
I love that there are endless activities and I don't ever have to tell my kids to go play. They can dig in the sand, make sculptures, sit in pools of water, take a walk, swim, play mermaids or horses, fly a kite, look for shells, go out in our kayak, build castles, run away from the waves, and whatever else their imaginations can come up with to do. This allows me to either do those fun things with them or do what I would like to do, which is a nice change.
So now there is sand in my car and there was sand in my ear until two days ago but that just means we have had a good start to our summer. Thus concludes my ode to the beach.
I love the ocean. I don't know if it is because I went so often as a kid or if it is just part of who I am but I love water in general and the ocean especially. I find the power of the waves inspiring and I love how it is always changing so it never gets boring; some days the waves are huge (fun!) some days the waves are calm (still fun!) and some days they are just right (super fun!). I love how the water is always moving and going somewhere, pulling or pushing you. I love how beautiful it is when a wave crests and crashes on itself, spraying white bubbles and kicking up sand and shells.My favorite is getting out just past where they are breaking and wave dancing. This is a sport I invented when I was nine or ten and my sisters were too old to come out and swim with me; they just wanted to sun tan. So I created my own competition and pretended I was a wave dancer performing in front of a large audience and I would rate my wave scores. I would do spins, leaps, dives, and all sorts of other movements that I made up names for and would spend hours out in the waves dancing. On the first day we got to the beach last week, the water was amazing and I was out there with my nine-year-old and one of my best friends and her nine-year-old and we were wave dancing together. It was seriously amazing. I felt like I was nine again as we held hands to leap over waves and as we spun around in circles and acted like dolphins.
Therein lies the magic of the beach. It doesn't ever stop being fun! There are plenty of things I do with my kids that are really only fun for them. Science museums, going to the park, going to the story time at the library, having their friends over and sometimes even the pool is for their enjoyment and often leads to more work for me. Going to the beach is a lot of work (oy the sunscreen!) but it is one of the few times that I get to play like a kid and actually enjoy myself and have as much fun as they do, if not more. Get me out in those ocean waves and I'm no longer a mom with responsibility for the lives of four children and a home and a yard. Thirty years just melt away and I'm a girl who loves to dance in the waves and play and be silly, something I honestly have a hard time doing the older I get.
I was able to have a magical parent moment with each kid during our week. It was so sweet to sit at the edge of the water where the waves would wash up with my three-year-old as he giggled every time a wave covered our legs. We would joke about where our toes went as they got buried deeper and deeper in the sand and throw clumps of wet sand on each other's legs until the wave washed them clean. I took my five-year-old out in the waves and she laughed as waves splashed our faces and I jumped big waves while trying to hold her up out of the water a bit. I cheered on my eight-year-old who was constantly in the water as he caught waves on the boogie board and didn't get upset when he got tossed by a wave. I loved swimming with my nine-year-old doing the very wave-dancing moves I did at her age and my heart about burst with joy at seeing her enjoy it too.
I love that there are endless activities and I don't ever have to tell my kids to go play. They can dig in the sand, make sculptures, sit in pools of water, take a walk, swim, play mermaids or horses, fly a kite, look for shells, go out in our kayak, build castles, run away from the waves, and whatever else their imaginations can come up with to do. This allows me to either do those fun things with them or do what I would like to do, which is a nice change.So now there is sand in my car and there was sand in my ear until two days ago but that just means we have had a good start to our summer. Thus concludes my ode to the beach.
Comments
Post a Comment