A Beach Scene

I’m writing from the beach today, my favorite beach.

It’s startlingly empty for noon on Saturday, July 3rd thanks to the cold front that so patriotically settled on the eastern coast on Friday afternoon. It’s windy. Every few gusts of northwesterly wind one will whip an artic blast off the 60-degree waves that gives me goosebumps. I’m the only one still in just my bathing suit, mostly out of laziness but part of me wants to give the clouds something to break for.

Exactly 365 days ago I sat on this very beach, possibly in the same rusted beach chair I found leaning against the outdoor shower behind my aunt’s clothing store. She’s our lifeline to this place, the lifesaver we cling to as the world changes around us. The beach ebbs and flows, sand comes and goes, and here we are on sixth street. We made it.

Last July third, as I crested the dunes, then in a full pack-mule sweat, there were umbrellas as far as the eye could see. But today, my lone beach chair and bag encampment is one of the few. It’s a view so vastly different and yet here I am. Same person. Possibly the same chair. Same flip flops (for sure). Different vessel for disguising my beverage (my company gave out Yeti’s last Christmas). Same scene. Different lighting.

It reminds me of a book of cut out paper dolls I used to play with at my grandparents’ house as a child. I couldn’t get enough. From the dusty stores of my memory, I recall my short love affair with them. I loved the punch out clothes and shoes found in the first few pages of the booklet, each with white Tetris-shaped protrusions to be folded behind a paper foot or secured a straw hat depending on the scene in question. I don’t remember the name of the main characters in any of my paper doll books or even if I had more than one, but I do remember organizing her clothes and shoes and bags and umbrellas with gusto.

With each turn of the page, she’d encounter new surroundings. It was my job to scour her arsenal of accoutrements and arm her for whatever the story had lined up next. Picnic in the park? Ah yes, her yellow day dress and matching parasol will be perfect. Yellow or what hat? Let’s not get too matchy, we’ll go with white. Duh, picnic basket. Each item would go onto my paper character, the white flaps securing it in place. So organized. So civil. Just my girl and her rotation of scenes. And then, one day, I never opened a paper doll book again. I imagine her once carefully organized Mary Jane shoes falling one by one from the bottom of the book as it moved from the shelf to a box to good will and then, finally, to the trash.

It was like that with most toys for me. Full throttle, all or nothing, live and breathe whatever genre of toy or item and then poof, I was gone. Polly Pockets. That skip-it thing that tore up my ankles. Linkin logs. Legos! Play mobile. Breyer horses. American girl dolls (Samantha, and then a version of Samantha with a manic-depressive half shave hair cut). At some point I dabbled in video games but gave up as my gaming skills were abysmal and then, l guess, such things were no longer needed to fill my off hours. Items no longer needed for the scenes in my book.

If I was a paper doll my accoutrement section would be endless, shoes and clothes and things as far as the eye could see. The scenes that followed would be many… oh so many. Back on LBI, though, is like being back at the beginning of my book. My childhood summers were spent here collecting shells with Mimi and Pop-Pop, and working at Sandy Banks, the boutique my aunt has owned for over two decades. It’s benchmarked my life for so long and I didn’t even realize it. With my siblings and parents spread far and wide I had unknowingly dropped an invisible pin in Beach Haven at some point along the way.

Returning from the detour taken to honor my paper dolls, I notice the clouds have gone. It’s still windy and the sea is dark and unruly. The afternoon tide seemingly enjoying some freedom before the crowds return with the blue bird day forecasted for tomorrow. I’m enjoying the solitude as well. I haven’t written in a while, life has been moving along like a well-oiled machine, albeit a model that certainly isn’t new. But as I check in a year after a visit here, my book of scenes has been revised. My paper doll no longer frantically clinging to the pages of her book, waiting for someone to move her from here to there. Her formerly flimsy paper backing has been replaced and reinforced.

In recalling the paper dolls books of my youth, I don’t remember punching out friends or pets the same way I did the main character. I think they just appeared in a scene here, a friend at the park stuck next to the gazebo waving, perhaps a dog stuck in a sit forever holding The Times in his mouth. How easy it must have been, an arranged marriage in every scene, no loss or longing, no desperation or sadness because of the characters in one’s daily carousel of scenes.

In my paper doll book, before the shoes and accessories, there’d be a section to select the people for each scene. I envision my friends and family as paper dolls, Hudson, too. It makes me think of those people no longer in the rotation, I miss them. It’s true, some people from my repertoire of character cut outs are gone. Some I crumpled up and threw in the trash on purpose, others left silently from the pages of my book. I imagine them drifting lazily from the worn pages like the Mary Janes I mentioned earlier, seesawing back and forth before landing face down like the chalk outline of a body in a cartoon. Some of the losses were hard, deliberate, scene stealing removals during which I wished I was armed with more than a yellow parasol. Others seemed to leave with discarded scenes I have since removed from my book, and for me remain stuck as memories in that scene’s place and time.

I see their faces smiling back at me on Facebook and Instagram, occasionally their names pop up in my texts and messages. For some, in addition to the like button, I wish there was a thank you option for me to push. Thanks for being there for me during whatever scene you acted in. You meant so much to me. You got me through a hard time, made that time in my life what it was. I think of the groundhog I named Nigel from my Covid summer outside Boston and laugh imagining her as a paper doll, I hope she’s thriving. I thank God for the changing cast in my book as well as the one that seems firmly locked in place.

If this year has taught me one thing, it’s the importance of the cast.The people you punch out and and take with you on your dance through the scenes that lay ahead. At least it has been for me. Naturally, chance will bring characters, good and bad, to you. Whether they stay for a long time or a short while, it’s often your choice. Sometimes, though it’s not. The ones that drift away might be some of the most important, don’t let space diminish their impact on your life. For me, those people live in my mind rent free. I think of them and wish them well, sometimes I’ll reach out. I miss them.

I’ll leave you with that thought, for now. My favorite cast member has joined me at the beach, blessedly his chair’s noisy plunk next to me has interrupted today’s rambling hello. Watching him arrange his accouterment makes me laugh, I picture him as a paper doll and think of the accessories his book would include . A football for sure. Some Lululemon pants. Sneakers. A pick up truck. None of that really matters, anyways. Same scene. Same tan. Different year. Same me. Happy.