My fingers won’t prune up.
It’s not as though I want to look like a forgotten raisin, shriveled and parched, but it's part of the ritual. There are certain parts of beach days that I crave. The way the thick sea air makes my hair twist into question mark curls around my face, the salt crystals I taste when my tongue touches my lips. The sand pasted to my skin when I take off my sunflower-yellow bikini top in the shower at night: these are beach traditions.
Pruned fingertips are also a tradition. When I have the rare day when I can lie on the beach and read or write or sleep or just lie still, I stretch out my towel as close to the high tide line as I can manage and still guarantee myself solitude. This is so that I am never more than a few feet from the sounds of the foamy green surf; the sound lulls me into a peacefulness as I doze under the sun. It is also so that I can slip into the sea foam at a moments' notice to cool off, staying neck-deep in the water until my fingers prune.
Sunbathing has fallen out of fashion, but I’ve never really been one to “lay out." I will tan, like it or not, through tinted windows and SPF 50 sunscreen. I don’t need to seek out the sun; I’m Italian – the sun seeks me.
No, I head to the beach more as a meditative exercise. The gurgle of the coming or falling tide and plaintive cry of gulls and terns have a more transcendental effect on my state of mind than Buddhist chants or Enya. I sink into my towel and, as the sun covers me in searing warmth, I slide deeper and deeper into nothingness.
Today the sun works overtime and I find myself succumbing to the lure of the saltwater every 20 minutes or so, surrendering to its not-quite-body-temperature refreshment. I curve my toes into the wet sand and let the water push and pull against me. It’s not quite cool enough for “perfect,” but compared to the “face of the sun” hot out of the water, I’ll take it.
I watch the boats go by. Somewhere, just past the swim buoys, there must be dolphin – no less then three tour boats come out to the same spot and linger. The yellow hums its twin engine song as dolphins chase its wake; the pretend tallship masts of the flashy red allow kids to look down at the marine mammals. When I see the yellow boat return with a new boatload of passengers, I do some quick mental calculations and realize that, with little exception, I’ve allowed the Gulf of Mexico to massage me with seaweed and salt for more than 90 minutes.
I look down at my fingers, pink and unpruned. Odd. I start to wonder why and debate looking it up on my iPhone when I get back to my towel. The debate is brief; I don’t need to get out of the water for any real reason, not yet and, as much as I rely on my phone, it seems wrong to browse the web at the beach.
It’d be kind of like listening to the radio in church.
