The air was warm but no match for the riptide, waiting for me to walk into its jaw and pull me under.
Pull me under, I whispered to it, I want to feel the salt water in my bones. Summer’s end was always something bittersweet, but the heat of the sun was quieted by the still cool of the water. I hadn’t always loved it, but that summer when my best friend’s dad had taught me how to ride a bike, I refused to get out of the ocean. By the end of the day my fingers were pruning and my hair was a mess of curls and saltwater. I took in huge breaths of air, before submerging myself back underwater, opening my eyes to the sandy ocean floor. Despite the burning and the redness in my eyes, I always opened them to see everything on the ocean floor.
Even that summer my cousin got bit by a crab, I still couldn’t stop swimming all the way down to the bottom. I came back up, gasping for air like a madman and laughing like a child. I dealt with the pain of salt and algae everywhere, just so I could spend a second watching the fish, the crabs, and even the sea urchins, scrambling around. In order to see the beauty, you had to endure the pain.
There was smoke coming from somewhere, and there always was, probably a bonfire or a teenager with firecrackers. We used to set them off relentlessly in the driveway, but I’d always grow scared before the boys dared me to toss one, and I’d have never backed down from a dare. I could see the smoke, through my red and stinging eyes, and reminded myself that in order to see anything beautiful you have to welcome the pain. The waves were crashing, and the still of the Atlantic ocean was taken to a halt as a wave crashed over my head, holding me under. After the attack, I swam back up to the surface, and flailed my arms around until I could get to the shore. I ran to my mother, in some kind of mix of laughter and sobs, begging her that we’d never come to the beach again. That was silly, as we stayed at my grandmother's Amagansett house every summer, which was right on the beach. I’d have to have been a fool if I thought I could avoid the ocean. I’d been pulled under trying to look at the bottom of the ocean floor, and I cried to my mother that I’d seen a crab and wondered if it had bit me. My feet were constantly cut up by shells underwater, and this time was no different. How can something so beautiful be so harsh? The red on my foot started to itch and I cried to my mother for a minute, sitting there wrapped in a towel so tightly I could barely breathe. Then I decided I missed the feeling of the cool water on my skin, and walked right back into the ocean. I got pulled under countless times that summer, and my feet always seemed to be bleeding.
After a day of the kids in the neighborhood and I running from jellyfish and parents trying to get us to put on more sunscreen, we’d retire to one girl’s pool. We’d eat popsicles in the backyard, toss firecrackers and roast marshmallows until it was too dark to see and mosquitoes had bitten every bit of flesh we had.
My father used to drive us to Goldberg’s bagels every Sunday cursing the traffic and the teenage drivers. There was never a car ride where Billy Joel, or some other 80s rock song wasn’t being blasted from the stereo, with the windows down on those patched over back roads. I remember summer with the smell of honeysuckle and salt water, my hair falling in my face and my mother and father laughing. I also remember sunburned scalps, angry hornets and late night driving recklessly through old dirt roads. I remember my grandmother swearing she’d kill the latest boy who’d broken my heart, and my little cousin asking me to scream Taylor Swift with her. I always did though, and loved it every time.
I could hear the ocean wildly thrashing around while I was trying to sleep, the breeze drifting through an open window. The smell of bagels in the morning was canceled out by the ocean air, overpowering anything else trying to be heard. You couldn't ignore the ocean. The sweet heat of the wet pavement made my feet turn red and my face go blue. As blue as the Fireworks on The Fourth Of July, or as blue as our tongues after slurping down dollar store slushies. We’d curse the sun when it was out for the searing heat, and then curse it when it was gone because we were scarcely allowed out after dark.
We always made a mess of everything, and were banned from the kitchen on certain days of the week. My mother said it was for her peace of mind. There were days with latkes sizzling on the stove, and my grandmother showing my photos from my dad’s Bar Mitzvah. She told me I looked so much like him, and I just sat there waiting for her to finish frying the last batch. She told me that it was a Jewish staple, and that she expected all the latkes to be finished by my cousin and I. We sat there, listening to Only The Good Die Young, and eating the latkes faster than my grandmother could fry them.
That’s how I remember summer, and that's how I always will.