{BEACHES}
I hope that I will always live where I can see the swoop of seagulls. Something about being near the water makes my heart sing. Strangely, though I have summered near beaches for over five decades, and have visited some of the world’s best for over forty years, I’ve never really enjoyed them. It may have something to do with being unceremoniously ushered off Edgartown’s beach in my youth. The good townspeople, it seemed, knew that the most patrician of Vineyard towns had no black residents and gently reminded my parents and me that the little curve of beach that we had selected for that day’s outing was reserved for Edgartown residents only. We retreated to “our” beach up the street, just a few minutes’ walk from our home. It was known—at first clandestinely and now proudly—as the Inkwell, for obvious reasons. Since that time, I’ve always been more than a bit ambivalent about the water’s edge.
Sand has traditionally been a part of the problem, too. I find that it is one of the most irritatingly rude elements invented by Mother Nature. No matter how hard I try to dust it off and wash it out, it sinks into corners and crevices that I didn’t know I had, to remain and irritate.
As a result, I’ve become a seaside philosopher of sorts, observing the behavior of beachgoers as though I were a Victorian naturalist watching the antics of some alien tribe. They are divided into three types: the sporty ones, the social ones, and those who seek only seclusion. They share the beach companionably, each group with its own hours and its own rituals.
I swim little. However, I secretly admire the people who do, flowing back and forth with the precision of aquacade dancers: arms rhythmically cleaving the ultramarine water as they glide between gently lapping waves. They are the sporty ones whose days are punctuated with exercises on the beach and sunrise swims.
The second types are rampant in Oak Bluffs. They are the social beachgoers. They occupy the beach, landing like the Allies on D-Day, complete with chairs and umbrellas, radios and coolers filled with a day’s nourishment, ready to camp out amid friends playing bid whist, gossiping, and nibbling. The chatting is interrupted only when the heat of the sun’s rays makes a brief dip obligatory. These folks are not here for the water. Rather, the water provides a locus for conversation and for coming together.
I number myself among the final type of beachgoers. We come out when the beach is closing down for the day. The chairs have been packed up and the buckets loaded back into the SUVs, along with the kids and umbrellas and leftover food. The beach is no longer as pristine as it is in early morning, but Iemanjá (the Yoruba goddess of salt water) does her work rapidly, and calm returns even amid the few bits of lingering detritus. The beach is peaceful in the early evening. Seagulls hover and dive looking for any morsels left behind, and dog walkers throw one last stick for their dripping Labradors. The only sound is the quiet lapping of the waves.
I’ll find a rock that is not too sandy, leave my belongings, and wade in singing softly to the ocean. If all is well, the waves will rush up to meet me, welcoming me back for yet another year. I shiver at the first touch of the frigid water, then gradually acclimatize and walk back and forth at surf’s edge, singing and dancing to the sea that is the mother of us all. I usually leave a gift—some coins or a flower. Then I turn, gather my belongings, and head back up the road. I’ve made my peace with the water for yet another year.