with apologies to Sarah Kay

I’m nine years old. John and I are on Boogie Boards. He’s going into the surf and gliding back in while I play in the tide because I am a horrible swimmer. We hear a whistle. It’s his dad, sitting in the lifeguard chair, waving for us to come back because we’ve drifted too far down the shore. We pick up our boards, drop them by the lifeguard stand, then grab shovels and start “digging for water.”

I’m ten. My friend Evan has joined us for the day and we’re on the playground. We’re sprinting around a wooden merry-go-round, trying to get it moving as fast as possible so we can hop on and then jump right off. He’s much better than I am at catching air, but it doesn’t matter because those few seconds before I land several feet away are the closest I ever get to flying.

I’m eleven. My sister and I are always trying to get a good volley going with our Pro Kadima paddleball set. After one too many frustrated sighs and digging through the sand for the navy blue ball, she goes back to the blanket and I decide to see how many times I can bounce the ball off the paddle. After I get past 100, I join my dad and my sister in creating a sandcastle that he expertly helps us sculpt using the edge of a credit card.

In all honesty, these may have been from the same summer. They may have all happened repeatedly over three or four summers. The years at Barrett Beach on Fire Island are all one continuous memory that begins when I’m probably about five or six and ends in the middle of junior high school. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, if we were free on a weekend (or sometimes a weekday when school was out), we’d head over to the marina and catch the ferry to Barrett, one of four communities that had ferry service running out of Sayville (the others being Sailor’s Haven/Sunken Forest, Cherry Grove, and The Fire Island Pines). At the end of the day, we’d get on the boat and come home, the smell of the beach staying with us as we hosed down our beach toys and ourselves in the backyard.

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