So I went to the beach yesterday. (8/5/04) And as I thought it over today, wondering how it could possibly be relaxing to take five of my own children, + someone else’s child on a 1 ½ or so hour trip to see Lake Michigan, I hit upon it. At the beach, I could just be. I could sit in the sand, nurse the baby, watch the waves crashing, Mani/Joy/Xay playing in the sand, Yani, Rachel, Natalie, Elizabeth and Maggie jumping waves in the icy water, and be so relieved.

This is the case with any of the playground trips, as well. You see, at home, I’m writing chore lists, doing laundry, steam-cleaning the carpets, making beds, changing diapers, bathing, reading, singing, nursing, something all day long. But at the beach, I can just sit there, maybe play in the sand, just look. . . ah. . . I get relaxed just thinking about it!

Curtis invited me (us) to the beach a few weeks ago to watch the sunset. Though I was still reeling from my sciatic nerve injury, and a little apprehensive of the water temperature at that hour, I jumped at the chance. Curtis took Joy in and got her used to the water. Later, while he held Esteban, I took my chance to run in and jump the waves. Joy boldly followed, not stopping even when the waves slapped her in the face. Yanni, who looks like a woman in her swim suit, jumped and splashed and frolicked like the 4-year old—Mani, who happily joined in.

Michiganians are funny about the beach. Winters are so long here that Summer is very precious. We grab it with both hands and squeeze it as tightly as we can. We know we can’t break it; rather we wring every last bit of life out of summer until, as early as August, and as late as October, we must resign ourselves to the cold weather months. As soon as the first timid rays of sunlight peep out in the spring, many of our neighbors are out jogging the block wearing shorts.

Yesterday at the beach, all the teenage girls from the swim club were in bikinis, despite the cool 75-degree weather. I heard that the water was 70 degrees—warm for Lake Michigan, but it felt more like 50. There’s a certain fortitude we Michiganians have when it comes to that cold lake. I marveled at the swim club wading deeper and deeper into the icy water—and the sand wasn’t even hot—and laugh and play like they weren’t freezing their butts off. But I also noticed that most of them preferred climbing the giant sand dunes behind us.

We have a few local ‘beaches.’ They are like playgrounds, or campgrounds on small, unmoving bodies of water, charitably called lakes. They have coarse, imported, dark sand, like the stuff dumped at all the school playgrounds. Woods Lake, in Kalamazoo even has acorns in its sand, and schools of minnows in its shallow end. These beaches are fun, even refreshing on a hot day, but they’re not Lake Michigan.

I’ve been there in South Haven, St. Joseph, Holland, and, yesterday, Grand Haven. Each of these coastal towns have several white sand beaches, a shoreline that goes on forever, and that cold lake. Lake Michigan freezes every winter, and never quite thaws out, but that doesn’t stop my fascination with it, or the beach. I can’t get enough of that weightless feeling I get there.

 I remember dragging Curtis there before we got married. We always went to South Haven, the nearest coastal town to us. We bought an inflatable boat from the army store, and Curtis or Zeke would blow it up with their own mouths. I tried, but didn’t have the wind for the whole boat. It was so much fun to jump the waves with the boat, and drift out toward the sunset with Curtis hanging off the side of the boat. I went once with Zeke and Yani when she was around 8-months old. It was the first hot day of 1992, and Curtis had to work. I had a baby lifejacket for Yani, but I was still terrified to have her in the boat for very long. I wonder what happened to that boat. . . ?

I had a terror around the water with my children until recently. Yanni and Xay are good swimmers, and Mani and Joy have a healthy fear of the water. It was at Fara’s house, two days before the beach, that I began to get a perspective on this water fear thing. Fara is one of my Woodward PTO friends. Woodward is the school Yani attended before we started homeschooling. Fara and I (and our children) used to go to the local beaches together in the summer. We’d scheme on getting invited to Sally, (another PTO mother)’s pool. Then, in the summer of ’99, both of us moved, and Fara bought a house with a pool. We have been going to her house to swim ever since.

Anyway, Fara had these two huge floating mats in her pool. I hate those things, because I’m afraid of some child getting stuck under it and drowning. I told Mani she could not ride on one, because she was not a good enough swimmer. She wanted to get on one and paddle herself around, though. Fara got in the water and helped Mani and another little girl and Joy on top of one of those. When I objected, she said, “Yeah, but we’re watching them.” A ha! A light came on. Of course, we’re watching them. All the fear and safeguards against drowning are for unsupervised children, just like rules about not talking to strangers! This struck a homeschool chord, and I was delivered of my fear of the children in the water!

Yesterday was a wet and wonderful day for my older four children. Yani and Xay had a swim meet in the morning. It was at a country club, which had a cute little wading pool behind the seating area, so Mani and Joy splashed around in that during the meet. Then we drove to the beach and did Lake Michigan.

Epilogue: A few weeks later, KPS (Kalamazoo Public Schools) started, and we took our annual family vacation. This time, we went to Traverse City, and added a new beach to our Lake Michigan list. That’s another story for another time.