Every second of their beach vacation on the beach

There are people who want to spend every second of their beach vacation on the beach. They’re already in Coppertone when they arrive and their sprinting towards the waves with their chair and a book that’s being made into a Netflix movie this fall. The only way to get them off the beach the day you leave is to remind them that Chick-Fil-A stops serving breakfast at 10:30. Even then, they’re dragging their chairs.

But I am not one of these people.

I love the beach. I think about Isle of Palms, Folly, and Edisto a lot on a Tuesday between Asana tasks. But for me, I don’t know, I might do a couple hours on half the days of my week on the literal beach.

It’s the sand — it’s hot, it gets everywhere (we all know … everywhere). And to relax on the beach you need a chair, an umbrella, or a tent thing that relies on little bags you fill with sand but the instruction booklet is longer than Les Mis, the tent is trying to lift like a plane built by the Wright Brothers, and by the time you get the thing up, you know there’s zero chance you’ll remember the exact right way to twist it back into the tiny little bag.

So by the time I sit down with my Ron Chernow book, I’m hungry and ready to eat this gritty peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple — Yay.

I’m more of a reading my Chernow on white linen sofas underneath a ceiling fan back at the house with a nice view. Maybe I’ll mark my place and thumb through the magazine from the visitor’s center and think it might be nice to go on a kayak tour of the marshes or see houses I’ll never afford.

But last week, I was sitting on the white sand of Mexico Beach, Florida watching the waves come in off the Gulf of … (Mexico? America? What is it?)

I’ve got a spot here with my wife, kiddos and their Memama. I built the tent, we got the chairs down, I ate my gritty sandwich and had my Chernow.

We’ve got the gulls cawing overhead, the surf teasing the shore, and the occasional F-35 patrolling above from the Air Force Base down the coast. The tide is out, and the air smells like some ocean creatures got tossed ashore with the seaweed and died, but mix in a little Coppertone and it’s nostalgic.

The water is translucent emerald until the wave picks it up and I can see through it. There’s a little island just off shore — I imagine a single-masted pirate sloop anchored there while men in longboats row ashore singing bawdy songs. They’re going to find a spot to divide the loot and get drunk.

The sand in my toes is cool which I understand is a perk of the white sands on the Gulf of Margaritas (this is my solution, something we can all get behind) — I bury my feet and feel the cool lumps between every toe.

My daughter is running about in her strawberry bathing suit. She calls my name while being counterproductive to my wife building a sand castle. She wants me to come get in the water but she chickens out the moment the surf gets close to her toes.

I have an idea. I sit down on the little slope made by the waves with my feet on the wet sand vacated by the last wave: “Let’s let the ocean lick our toes, Abigail!”

“Okay!” She sits, and she laughs and says “That’s a good one,” every time a wave gets us both.

She sits for a while then races off to not help build sandcastles.

I feel a plop beside me and see my baby son sitting there. So far, he’s hated the water but here he is giggling with the waves reaching for his feet.

We see the translucent emerald surf, the pirates cracking a box full of Madeira wine, and we listen to the crash, the ebb and the wash of the surf.

I could sit here all day.