A familar smile

The hinges stick a little and screech at me as I ease open the trunk of my ’97 Honda Accord; a few small pieces of paint chip off the corners and fall to the ground. I slide a few fingers of my right hand in between the tight pink rubber of the beach chair we’ve had in our family for as long as I can remember, and lift it out of the cluttered trunk. With my left hand I clutch a floral towel and wrap it around my neck. I slam the trunk and scamper up the boardwalk. I scan the beach, searching for my designated area. A large man slouches in a white lawn chair, his back fat seeping through the small cracks in the back of the chair. The sun illuminates his round, pink body, but a gleaming smile is immersed across his face. Not far off, two white haired women lay on the stomachs, facing each other, eyes squinted shut as they try and control their laughter. Near by, a young, tanned lady and her brawny, long blonde haired husband hold each other as they watch their naked baby run from a crashing wave, tripping on his own towering sand castle. He picks up his sandy face and looks up at his radiant parents, a smile stretched across his face like plastic wrap.

I spot a small area of unoccupied earth and bolt over to it. I lay out my floral towel, and perch myself in between a single women to my left and a half naked man to my right. She faces the ocean, a worn book in one hand, and a bottle of water in her other. She turns my way and flashes me a relaxed smile, her impressively white teeth making me almost cover my own mouth. I turn my attention to the middle-aged man, wearing a rather small, navy Speedo. A small, friendly grin appears on his bronze face as he glances my way, soft wrinkles collecting on either side of his cheerful eyes. He immediatlely turns and bolts to the ocean, dives in as a dolphin would, and takes off doing the freestyle against the current.

I rest my body on my towel, relaxing my weight so that the sand forms around my body underneath me. I glance out at the surf. Small, rolling waves break randomly onto the sandbar. Several tan bodies glide across the surface of the water on their stomachs. They make it past the breaking waves and sit up, miraculously, on the water. I study them for a second and realize they are NOT the second coming of Christ as one of them stands on a small piece of foam and charges down one of the tiny waves.

I check my cell phone for the time, and finally rest my head on the towel. My mind wanders as I think about the white haired women, probably life long best friends, and picture their laughing, wrinkled faces. The large man, the happy family, the single women reading her book, the dolphin man, and the group of surfers, all in the same place, at the same time, totally unaware of each other. Each living their own separate lives, facing their own separate problems, knowing nothing of one another. But all sharing one, huge thing in common; a love for the beach. Each overcome by an uncontrollable happiness of just being near the ocean, feeling the salt mist their faces, the sun beaming down on their bodies, warming them from the inside, out. And now I lay here soaking in the sun, not knowing a soul, but feeling this uncontrollable happiness, I can’t help but cast a smile. 585