My dad liked to take my two brothers and me, all three of us in grade school, to the beach but not in the normal fashion that other families followed. We’d arrive at sunrise, when the sand was still cold. We’d walk down the sand-covered boardwalk and stairs to the beach. We’d lay out our towels carefully. My dad would wear a straw cowboy hat and tan swim trunks with red and white trim on the edges. He’d wear an unbuttoned white dress shirt covering his bare back. The shirt would flap around like a luffing sail as he walked in even a light breeze.
We had the whole beach to ourselves. The sand would squeak under our feet as we walked down to the edge of the water. My brothers and I would wade into the waves and gradually submerge our bodies. We’d let ourselves drift farther out into the water and then be carried back to shore by the waves washing over us. My dad rarely ventured into the water, but he once walked in wearing his swim trunks and his cowboy hat. He must have forgotten that he had his hat on because after he sunk down into the waves, put his head under water, and came back up, he looked shocked to see his hat floating away.
The beach smelled like Coppertone sunscreen, seaweed, and dead fish. We had one bottle of Coppertone that seemed to last my entire childhood. The label showed a picture of the dog pulling down the little girl’s swimsuit bottom. I’d lay on my towel staring at that girl and her dog. (The current version of that logo now shows the girl in a one-piece swimsuit and the dog merely standing up on his hind legs behind her.) My dad never packed a picnic or brought water jugs. Once we were hungry or thirsty, we’d go home. He did bring a rough, brown wool Army-surplus blanket to sit on. He didn’t wear sandals or tennis shoes, only black leather work loafers. He’d take those off, pull off his black socks, and sit on the blanket, showing off his stark white feet. My dad sometimes brought an old, black tire inner tube, which he’d inflate at the lake with a blue bicycle tire pump. The valve on the tube would stick straight out, and we’d have to avoid getting poked by it as we hung onto the inflated tube and spun around in the water.
I don’t remember my dad talking very much, if at all, during those mornings. He’d sit on the blanket watching my brothers and me ride the waves, take turns floating on the inner tube, and dig and build with our hands in the sand. He may have brought a magazine, maybe Car and Driver, to read while we laid on our towels near him. I don’t remember my mom ever going to the beach with us. She and my dad did go to the beach together, usually once each summer, at night, leaving us at our grandmother’s house and retrieving us near midnight.
Around the time that other people were coming to the beach with their coolers, picnic baskets, and umbrellas, we were packing up to go home. We’d walk back up to the parking lot, try to get a glimpse into the dark interior of the concession-stand building through its screen door, and then head to the car. Depending on which year it was, we’d pile into the blue Gremlin, the beige Astra, or the brown Monaco, and start the half-hour drive back to Grand Rapids. Once we got home from the beach, all four of us would go to our separate corners of the house and read our library books.
The beach with my dad was not the blazing hot landscape filled with shouts and laughter of other people that most other kids experienced. It was a cool, quiet, morning world, where my brothers and I moved in water together as we looked back at our dad sitting on his blanket, a singular figure on the empty expanse of sand, the sun rising slowly over the trees far behind him.
Christine Fraser
Christine Fraser grew up reading and writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and spent many summer days on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. During the next 14 years, the lake’s western shore in Chicago, Illinois, became her home, where she earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from Loyola University Chicago and began a career in educational publishing. In the 1990s, she studied with Elizabeth Alexander at the University of Chicago and heard Robert Creeley and Seamus Heaney read in person. She has participated in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival four times, in poetry, memoir, and fiction workshops. From 2017 to 2020, she co-edited the online poetry journalRockvale Review. Her poems have appeared inNew Ohio ReviewandBlue Earth Review.Christine lives near Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and their two young-adult children. With them, she has hiked on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, explored Washington Island and North Manitou Island in Lake Michigan, and driven the Circle Tour of Lake Superior. She remembers Robert Creeley’s poem “One Day”:One day after another—/Perfect./They all fit.