The Beach

In England, we went to Cornwall in the summer, and after my grandmother died, to North Wales. Of the two, North Wales had the gentler beaches. In Cornwall, the beaches tended to be tiny coves surrounded by huge black cliffs. I remember my parents trying to coax me into the ocean there. I was totally uncoaxable, so they resorted to coercion. That didn't work, either. The next step was "When all else fails, apply brute force." I remember being lifted off the sand, with a parent attached to each arm, and being rushed toward a wall of water that seemed taller than I.

In North Wales, the approach to the beach was over sand dunes. As we crested the dune, we were hit with a sand-laden gale that could kill any desire to go closer. That, and the tide pools containing crabs and other things that could bite, pinch or sting.

In British Columbia, my first experience of the beach included a lot of barnacle-covered rocks. There was sand, but I had to cross the barnacles to get to it. Vancouver itself has nice beaches, as does the west coast of Vancouver Island. On the east coast, the barnacles prevail until one gets north of Nanaimo. At Qualicum, the beaches are broad and shallow and sandy. Nice for spattering about.

You can probably tell by this time that I am not a beach person. I don't like the combination of sun lotion and sand. I don't like salt in my hair. And, above all, I don't like inimical creatures.

I have to say that the worst beach I ever ventured onto is the Texas Gulf Coast. It has been a long time since I've been there, except for Galveston, which is well-manicured. Down Padre Island, where we used to camp back in the day, was a nightmare.

SSS had a unique way of selecting a campsite. He would drive our Dodge van down the beach, past the "4-wheel drive only" sign and wherever we got stuck was where we camped.

The beach there is not "kid friendly," and hence, not "mom friendly." For starters, cars drive right down it, usually where the wet sand becomes the dry sand. Between the tent and the water. You can't hear them coming, because of the surf, and neither can your toddler. Frequently there were great gobbets of tar all over that could not be avoided. Several times there had been a recent storm which had blown thousands of Man O' War jellyfish up onto the sand, where they lie around and die in all their poisonous glory. There are sand fleas, and biting flies aplenty, and the ever-present, sand-laden wind. If you step around behind a dune to get away from that, you find ten thousand mosquitoes are doing exactly the same thing.

The last trip I took there was with SSS, a couple of friends who were visiting from Chicago, and toddler Chandra. We were there for four days. At the end of that time, I figured up the fun hours and discovered that I had had a whopping 15 minutes of relaxation. Between the cooking, cleaning up, getting sand out of the tent and being super-vigilant about the baby, I had not laid a hand to a fishing rod, or even gone for a swim. I realize the beach is not the smartest vacation choice with a toddler, but, with SSS, one took what was offered, or one got nothing at all.

I have never been back.