OUT OF THE BLUE

About this time of year I long for the beach. Not the honky-tonk kind, its teeming boardwalks lined with high-rise hotels. When my children were small, we caravanned with three other families to Cape Cod for two weeks, sometimes longer. We rented simple cottages several miles from a quiet crescent beach in Dennis, on the bay side of the Cape. A few houses sat high on the bluff near a tiny snack stand. Nothing commercial within sight — not even the parking lot, where you needed a sticker issued by the town.

Just fine white sand, calm water.

I rose at dawn to pack the cooler with lunch, sometimes creative given seafood possibilities and leftovers from the nightly charcoal grill.

Does anything taste better than a wedge of drippy-ripe watermelon by the sea? Or a soggy sandwich filled with garden-ripe tomatoes?

But mostly I loved settling in a low folding chair while water lapped my feet as the tide crept in.

Heaven.

My parents weren’t big on vacations. We spent most summers at my grandparents’ house, in Greensboro. Fear of polio prevented excursions. I remember one jaunt to Jones Beach, a long subway ride from Manhattan, where we lived. I made up for it as an adult, when my husband and I found off-season package deals to St. Thomas, Jamaica, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Antigua — homes to blinding white sand and impossibly turquoise water.

For me, staring out across the sea has a hypnotic effect. The diorama of that Cape Cod cove was enough to wash away — or at least put on hold — fatigue, problems. The children needed nothing more than pails, shovels and beach balls to keep them occupied, while the daddies played touch football and the mommies traded ideas for communal suppers.

Despite ideas, supper was almost always burgers, drumsticks, a big bowl of salad, fruit and Popsicles. One rainy evening I made a splash with spaghetti, a welcome change. S’mores hadn’t been invented but toasted marshmallows worked, as did frozen chocolate-dipped bananas.

By sunset the little ones had faded into bed and the grown-ups opened a bottle of wine.

This was the early ’70s. TVs were black and white. Central AC? Mobile phones? Please, except in James Bond flicks.

I miss the simplicity of those days, on that beach. I miss the soft, steady breeze and warm, rarely hot sun that produced a glorious tan to set off pastel dresses. The beach owned an elemental feel, rightly so, since this cove had probably existed for eons.

When the children were older we spent time at another beach, in Maine, where the expanse of sand was packed hard as concrete and the water, even in August, was cold enough to anesthetize toes. Here, not many people braved the waves. Walking or riding bikes was the primary exercise. Lobster at Barnacle Billy’s, an annual treat. A few locally-owned motels faced the beach, no neon, nothing glamorous. Their decks — perfect for watching the sunrise with coffee and fresh doughnuts from a nearby take-out.

Ahhh . . .

These beach experiences differ from crowded, scorching Southern seashores. They satisfy a need: to turn down the volume, create distance from worrisome headlines.

They allow for naps under the umbrella, for staring at the horizon, for burying toes in the sand and enjoying the sun. For fried clams at a roadside stand. For feeding the gulls, whose raucous rhetoric reminds me of political conventions.

My daughter Wendy felt the same. While at Duke, she and friends would run away to the Outer Banks or Ocracoke. They camped out around a bonfire, probably illegal, but nobody bothered them in November.

Yes, the seashore conveys something basic, timeless, affirming, poetic.

I want to go back.