At the Beach

It’s not like I hadn’t heard it before. My mother told me my whole life. I even said it to my kids. “Don’t forget to wear sunscreen!” So why did I?

We were having a wonderful day at the beach. It was sunny and windy and it was the last trip my daughter and I would be taking together for a very long time. She was moving back to Canada to study medicine, or more precisely anthropology or maybe it’s something else, I can never remember.

So one beautiful Thursday morning in South Carolina, we headed out to the beach. I stopped for gas at my regular place in our little town and the manager asked me what we were doing today. I said we were going to the beach. He looked at me funny because he knew my daughter was in school. “How long will you be gone?” “We’re coming back later today.” The look of astonishment on his face was priceless. What? It’s just a three and a half hour drive. We’ll get there around noon, have lunch, stay at the beach for a couple of hours, walk around town and drive back home. No big deal, we’ve done that hundreds of times.

I must admit we are a little odd. One time, back in Canada, we took my mother to dinner three hours away just because she wanted to go to Red Lobster and they had closed all the restaurants in Quebec, we had to go to Ontario. But I digress.

We stopped at a nice seaside restaurant for lunch, food was great, company was even better. Our times together are very special.

Then we drove to the beach. We jumped on the hot sand, found a nice uncrowded spot and laid out our towels. We put sunscreen on and went in the water. Oh glory! The water was perfect, the waves were just exciting enough, and no sign of a shark. We stayed in the water for a while, then went back to our towels. At this point, we put some more sunscreen. I didn’t put any on my face since I had not been underwater. I figured I was safe.

After a couple of hours, we decided to go back. I felt a little burn as I was trying to put my clothes back on, but I thought it was just because my skin was still humid. My daughter looked at me a few times and laughed each time as I was getting redder and redder. By the time I got home, my face and shoulders were as red as a lobster. My husband couldn’t believe his eyes and my stupidity.

By the next morning, I couldn’t open one of my eyes and my whole face was swollen. Enough so that my husband didn’t want to go anywhere with me, he thought he’d get arrested for domestic violence.

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Life As I see it

At the Beach