Family Time at the Beach by Susan Evelyn (top 10 best books of all time .txt) 📖

Family Time at the Beach

By Susan Evelyn

A day at the beach. How lovely! Not so for everyone.

She did not want to be there. She would rather be at home, in her room, feeling miserable in private. But, no. The announcement had been made - the family was going to the beach for the day. Father had decided and there was no arguing.

The beach had been crowded. Other people had had the same idea for this summer weekend day. The family of five had found a place for themselves. It had been close enough to the water so that anyone not in the surf could see those that were, and there had been enough space for all the stuff that they had schlepped from the car park.


She had not gone in the water. The very thought of the rising water level delivering a chilling slap to her body had made her shake. She had not been feeling well. The last thing she had needed was the involuntary tensing of her tummy causing the muscles to contract and cramp so that she would feel even worse.

She had sat fully clothed on her towel which she had carefully spread over the sand. She did not like the beach much at all. Never had. Her mother often teased her about how even as a baby she had refused to crawl off the blanket to play in the sand. It all seemed quite rational to her. The dry sand shifted under the blanket making the surface uneven and uncertain – not a great sensation for a baby when they are unsure of their stability anyway. Then also the sand sticks to skin more than it sifts through soft baby fingers.

Even on days when she felt well enough to go in the water, the idea was unpleasant. The water made her feel sticky and the salt would later dry and flake on her skin. The fine sand would be churned up by the wave action of the surf and be deposited on her legs or, worse, collect inside her swimming costume. Sometimes the waves would bring jellyfish or bluebottle stingers close to shore, or roll seaweed around swimmers’ legs. And there was nothing to do, either. She could not surf the small shore waves, and the shallow drop off of the sandy bottom did not allow for comfortable floating let alone any swimming. That left the only activity of standing in the shallows and pretending to jump the wavelet crests or squeal as the water rose up her body temporarily. After enduring that, there was then the torture of coming out of the water and trying to dry herself with a towel feeling like sandpaper where it dragged accumulated sand from the beach across her skin. No thanks!

So there she had sat and waited while the family moved in and out of the water, sometimes coming to sit and warm up again before heading back into the water to repeat the process over and over. Hours passed. Finally the father decided that it was time for lunch; the lunch sandwiches that had been made earlier that day and had been carried down to the beach in cooler packs to keep them fresh.

Everyone had been called out of the surf. They had each dried themselves of the water that continued to drain from their swimming costumes and ran in little rivulets down their legs. All their items had been picked up, and packed up, so that they could carry it all down the length of the beach to the rocky headland at the southern end.

Standing up she had felt the light touch of giddiness as she had gained her footing. She had not thought much of it as time had marched along and she had become quite hungry. There had been no point in saying anything about the dizziness. There never was. No-one was ever interested in what she might be feeling.


Soon enough anyway, everyone had been hustled into making the trek along the sand to the refuge of the rocks to eat lunch. After all, the father had not wanted sand to get into his sandwiches.

The easiest way to traverse the distance had been to walk along the harder, and more stable, damp sand just above the water level rather than the shifting scrunching dry sand high above the tide line. There had also been fewer people to avoid along that route rather than having to navigate around the many groups of people who had staked out their little patch of beach.

The noise of all the people on the beach had beaten against her mockingly like the waves crashing over the sand. The churning swirling water had reached towards her feet and then withdrawn in a constant dizzying cycle.

The sun had been hot. The sand had been hot. She had been hot. The time had been late and she had also become quite hungry. She had been struggling to keep up with the family, particularly with her sister who had been striding out ahead of them while they had passed the young lifesavers being put through their training exercises.

Blackness washed over her. She was no longer struggling, or hot, or uncomfortable. There was no sound.

Peace!

She could not hear her sister saying “Keep walking. Don’t stop. Pretend we don’t know her.”

She did not find out until later that her younger brother had stood a little apart from the group unsure whether to follow his favourite sister or stay with his mother. He had stood aside showing off his sun-bronzed body to the girls who had been watching the junior life-savers with his long red hair dripping down his back.


She did not see her father run around falteringly in ever decreasing circles unsure whether to go or stay while issuing instructions to the other siblings to go to the shop for some lemonade.

She was unaware that the life-saver instructor rushed from his trainees to see what was going on. Of course, he immediately leapt to the wrong conclusions and would have started full recovery procedures were it not for her mother. She did not hear the soothing words of her mother as she was trying to placate the life-saver with simple statements that everything was okay. The situation was far simpler than he supposed. Her daughter had merely fainted. She had done it before.

All the while, she did not know that her sister was becoming more impatient in reaction to the personally embarrassing situation that, of all the people on the entire beach, her older sister chose to fall down in front of the life-savers.

Where she was, was sparkly bright, and quiet.

Slowly sound began to return.

First to be heard were the seagulls hovering over the back line of waves. That was soon replaced by the sound of the surfers talking as they paddled their boards to line up with the gathering swell that would become the next shore-bound wave. Later came the squeals of the lesser swimmers crowding the shallows and jumping the little waves after they had broken closer to the beach.

Slowly her consciousness gathered back to her body so that she could hear the life-saver repeating his questions to her until she answered. She was surprised to find herself lying on the hard sand, to hear her mother’s voice telling the man hovering over her that everything was in fact alright, to have her father interrupt with a can of soft drink when she knew that they had not brought any with them.


Her hands felt clammy and there was strange ringing in her ears. She could feel the beat of her heart reflected in the hot blood rushing past her eardrums. Not sure how she had come to be on the sand, she struggled to sit up, and then stand up. Once on her feet, she was soon fully returned to the uncomfortably hot and unwell sensations of before. The mouthful of soft drink helped a little. Her stomach growled emptily.

Her sister had already resumed walking towards the rocks and soon the rest of the family were following suit. Her sister had only one thing to say.

“How embarrassing!"

Publication Date: 02-03-2010

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