On a day trip away from Surfside, we walked around historic Charleston, SC. The air smelled of horses and ocean. As we walked up King Street from The Battery I peeked through countless wrought iron gates at the lovely private courtyards, which were my favorite part of the entire visit.
My mind and heart were bleached clean by the sun and salt water during one June week in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. I found myself wanting to use my Canon again after years of disinterest. I’ll be sharing a few sets of shots from that week in the next few posts.
When we are here there is no hurrying and no herding and no lunch-packing, no prying small hands off of my body, no pushes toward the school door, no blue eyes full of longing to be home. We walk along the bay bottom at low tide and dig, and we poke at slimy things with long sticks. We pick up the hermit crabs, and we talk about how we love our visits to the beach, and we don’t talk about the times in between. We are different people when we are here.
John’s late grandmother would sit here in her Jordache cut-offs and read in the evenings, her feet propped up on the ottoman and a glass of watered-down wine beside her. At low tide, a warm breeze would come to her through the sliding glass door, smelling of muck and mussels and ruffling the pages of her book.
We weren’t really lost; we could see the house just across the cove. But the fields were so very cold and muddy, and the winds came off the water and whipped stinging sand at our eyes and mouths, making the evening seem desperate and epic. And so our thoughts and conversation turned to fire and food and warmth and shelter. The Muscari pushed toward the sunset, unfeeling, insensitive to our struggle for survival.
I found it at the edge of the Atlantic, lifeless, grey, sliding in the foam. The pain of the frigid waters shot up my legs as I darted in to pluck the ocean’s dead from her shallows. The white last now sits on my window sill, the trophy of a landlocked housewife.
Last night I had such a vivid dream of the beach house in December: huddling against the bitter wind blowing through the uninsulated front wall, trying to coax water to flow through frozen pipes and out the tap. The winter will be long.
A classic dinner scene at the beach. I am honored that this shot was chosen as photo of the day today over at The Maternal Lens.
As I watched this day end I somehow knew that I was really watching the end of a season. When we left the next morning, the air had turned much colder. The leaves that lined the turnpike with fire on our way down turned brown and curled in the wake of our speeding northbound minivan.
Tomorrow evening, the kids and I will be at John’s grandmother’s place, watching the sun set over **the** **bay**. This is probably the last summer we’ll be able to spend time at the beach house: John’s grandmother passed away in December and the house most likely will be sold at the end of the season. Ten random traditions we’ll be observing over the next ten days: :: **Morning coffee** on the dock :: Saying **goodbye to the sun** on the dock :: Midnight visits to the dock (can you tell we like the dock?) :: A large pie with onions, sweet peppers and mushrooms from ***Nicola Pizza*** in Rehoboth :: **Fisher’s caramel corn** in Bethany (can you tell we like to eat?) :: Book browsing at **Bethany Beach Books **:: Letterboxing at **James Farm**, which is within walking distance of the house via road or squishy bay bottom at low-tide :: $1 toy shopping at ***Fun For All*** in Rehoboth :: Clamming at low tide, followed by our famous clams casino (again with the eating) :: Wading to the far shore of the cove to hunt for dessicated baby horseshoe crabs (not for eating) ...