Boys at the Beach

My grandson and his stepbrothers have been cavorting here at Ocean Park this weekend. This cranks up the time machine for me, as I squint my eyes and imagine myself on the same beach at their ages. I sense it most when I see them running in or out of the water. Some part of me can feel the muscles move to the rhythm of uncontainable excitement about What’s Next. A great wave? A chance to splash someone? Digging for sandworms?

Since my family has been coming here for generations, there is also the pleasure of checking in with other branches of the family tree. They are strangers from all over, but we share a common link to my great-grandfather, a legendary Mainer who purchased the family cottage in the 1930s for his wife. She willed it to her two daughters, one of whom was my father’s mother. And so down the decades the cottage flowed, with the family presence amplified by later additions. It all adds up to years made visible here in Maine each summer.

I smell bacon cooking downstairs, which means breakfast with the boys and my daughter is coming up soon, followed by more beach fun and a train ride to Boston. How much fun can a boy of 61 stand?

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