Susan Senator

I woke up to an overcast sky this morning and felt my high spirits teeter slightly, but I said to myself, “Oh well,” and started to imagine the stuff we could do here on the Cape on a cloudy day. In the past we’ve gone to Provincetown and climbed Pilgrim’s Monument, which is something I did as a kid so it is one of those wonderful connections to my distant and happy past. Laura and I would go up as fast as we could and then run down, hoping to get into P-town as fast as possible so that we could get candy. I would get fudge and she would get — wax lips! Well, she was not much of a candy eater, so being a natural clown, this made sense.

Anyway, the sun burst through somehow and I did not have to think of something for us to do. The beach is the obvious choice when it is this beautiful out. No exercise for me this morning (except I would ride my bike the long way to the beach through the woods and the salt marsh); I did a lot of belly dancing last night and the 4 1/2 mile run so I was a bit achey. (Last night Ned downloaded Ravel’s Bolero from Itunes which makes great belly dancing. I know, I know, it has those connotations from the movie Ten, but that was not my intent.)

So we amassed at Nauset Light beach, very uncrowded for the third of July, and set up our beach tent, and tried the water. It was 58 degrees, typical early July at the Cape. Difficult to get used to, even with a wet suit. So, for a while we played in the sand until we were so hot we couldn’t stand it.

And then, a wonderful thing happened. All five of us went in, really in. (No picture, alas, because, well, we were all in!) We had four boogie boards and the waves were becoming just right (almost, but not quite, low tide). We have never before been in the water altogether. Ben has usually shunned the deeper waves and stayed sandbound. But this year, the fish switch was turned on, and he is suddenly a swimming boy! 

Ben even confessed that “once, he peed in the ocean,” a sure sign of comfort with the waves.

Ned and I took him out to the bigger waves and tried to teach him how to catch them just at the right moment with the boogie board. He didn’t quite get it, so Ned realized he had to launch him, same as he did once a long time ago with Nat and then Max. He would toss the boy into the breaking wave at just the right point and they would catch a perfect ride.
Ben’s expression was a mixture of ecstasy and fright — a perfect combination of emotions for a day in the Atlantic.