In the past when I have come home we have been in such mad rush to do so many things and see so many people that I haven't spent much time at the beach. This is particularly annoying as my mother lives all of three minutes from it. (I'm not exaggerating - we actually timed ourselves coming home the other day.) This visit we decided to make the beach a priority so my son could really get to know and love it a bit like I do. Basically I wanted to give him a little taste of my own childhood which was spent in the water so much that I've often wondered how my brother and I don't have webbed feet.

While I was an all-day beach kid growing up I've been happy to spend just an hour or two there this time. (Those all day episodes are long over - thanks to all the skin cancer scars.) Today we went at noon which is a time I normally avoid but it was low tide and we are on a serious shell collecting binge. So, covered in sunscreen (which did an amazing job - not a bit of burn is to be found on me), we hit the beach that I grew up on. (My son calls this "Pepere's Beach" as it is where my father parked his beach chair for 25 years.) Here's what we saw:

One Pompano pulled in by a surf fisherman who gleefully looked forward to eating it for dinner
One shovelhead shark pulled in by another surf fisherman (he let several kids including my son touch it before he set it back into the water)
A bunch of crabs who proved to be uncatchable
A bunch of sand fleas who continue to creep me out even after all these years
One living sand dollar; something I have never seen in my life (and was promptly returned to the water so it could do whatever sand dollars do)
One sand dollar broken in half which we brought home and is very wicked cool (it was long dead)
Roughly one million shells and we took home a crazy amount of them

Oh - and a bunch of spring breakers who made inappropriate bathing suit choices. (Does no one look in the mirror anymore????)

I think one of the things that has frustrated me as a reader growing up in Florida is how rare it is to find writers who can capture just how crazy stupid and yet also deeply wonderful this state is. (John D. MacDonald is still the master.) You had to be on the beach today, with people from toddlers to eldery enjoying themselves, to appreciate how delightful it can be here. Yes - the summers are hell on earth (and I mean that literally) but there are days of grace that make me remember my childhood all over again like it has just been minutes gone by and not decades. My son ran screaming into the water today, laughing and splashing with abandon and the ghost of my seven-year old self was right there with him. I watched them both streak by me and was glad to be here to see it; glad to fall in love all over again with that little girl who never wanted to leave the beach.

I could have stayed all day; I hope my father saw us.

[The shovelhead, also known as the bonnethead, is the smallest of the hammerhead species.]