On Memorial Day, my sister,
my brother-in-law and I went to the Fairfield Beach Club for a picnic—on the
porch.
I have only recently joined
this club where I spent almost every summer day of my childhood. My membership is
my back-up plan against the time when I no longer want to make the eighteen-hour
trip to Cornwall, England where I have spent the last twenty-five summers.
As a child at the Fairfield
Beach Club I was in bliss. I can remember it all: the hideous matching wool
bathing suits Mom bought my sister and me that, when wet, dragged with such
wet-wool weight that we could scarcely swim: the hours spent creating drip
sandcastles on the sand bar that, at low tide, emerged off to the right, beyond
the second raft: sandcastles we decorated with translucent yellow and pinkish
shells and water-smoothed bits of green glass. Surrounding our edifices with
moats, we filled them with buckets of water that we scooped and carried from the
edge of the sand bar.
I loved the squish of the
soft sand between my toes, the salty smell of the air, and the hot sun on my
back.
We were taught to swim by Mr.
Cleveland who, during the school year was our shop teacher at the Unquowa
School. (We made endless cutting boards for our mothers in the shape of pigs.)
He was nice enough, but, while I, at five years-old, wind-milled my arms and
frantically kicked my feet through the water toward his out-stretched arms, he
kept backing away, saying things, like, “Just a little bit further . . .” Was he trying to drown me?
Nonetheless, swimming and diving became my
passions. I was supple as a fish when I swam underwater, my eyes open, gliding
along the slimy, twisted and thick rope to the first raft where we younger
children hung out, lying on woven hemp mats that were fixed to the raft to
prevent slipping. The diamond pattern of the weave would be imprinted on my
skin when I stood to dive. Springing upwards, arching sharply and, arms and
head aligned, I would knife cleanly into the blue/green waters of Long Island Sound.
The second raft was for
teenagers only—a territorial rule in the manner of tribes. I never made it to
the second raft, at least not to hang out, because, sadly, we left the Beach
Club when I was thirteen.
If it suddenly rained, we
would gather in an old barn set away from the formal clubhouse and play
Ping-Pong. We were a gang: a gang of a few girls but mostly boys. I grew up
with boy best friends. (Do kids still do that?) When puberty kicked in things
became more complicated, but then? It was just fun.
When we were old enough to
spend the day at the Beach Club without Mom, sometimes on those sudden rainy days,
we’d pool our resources and walk the two miles from the club up the road into
Fairfield to the Community Theater, where, for thirty-five cents, we could see
a double feature.
Territorial rules were not
confined to the second raft. In fact, they abounded at the Beach Club. Kids,
like me, collected in one area, up from, but quite near the water, where we
would lie all wet and salty in the warm sand and, with our arms, drag piles of
sand forward toward our chests to warm ourselves. Being covered with wet sand was
not something we worried about.
Teens, however, sat on low,
folding, canvas chairs--my older sister among them--in an area high up the
beach, far from the water’s edge. I would never have dared to join her.
Mom and her friends, in
discreet, one-piece suits, some wearing wide-brimmed hats, were similarly
seated in folding chairs. They formed a semi-circle near enough to the edge of
the water to keep an eye out, but close enough together to chat.
The bastion of social power
and esteem was the Beach Club porch, a grey painted, wide, wooden structure,
which commanded a view of the entire beach and the Sound beyond. Steps led up
to it from the beach. The porch was scattered with white wicker tables and
chairs, and small couches with flowered cushions.
It was here that my
grandmother and her friends—my grandfather could only be found at the golf
course--gathered to gossip, have lunch and play bridge. Wearing pastel printed
cotton dresses, they pinned their white hair either in rolls at the sides of
their heads or spun into buns on the top. With their lips free of lipstick and
their stockinged feet tucked into white tie shoes with one-inch, wide heels,
from this porch, they ruled.
No one in a bathing suit was
allowed on the porch. To speak to my grandmother I had to remain standing in the
sand at a respectful distance.
As my sister and I set the
table I had reserved for our picnic on that porch, we were overcome by memories.
“We are Grandmother!” I shouted, both of us laughing. “How did that happen?”
The porch is no longer
wooden. Practicality has asserted itself and the porch is now grey, painted
concrete. Gone is the wicker furniture with the flowered cushions, replaced by white
and easily moved plastic chairs and tables. One step downward off the concrete
platform takes you into the sand.
Nonetheless it remains The
Porch and, one day in the not so distant future, I will sit there regularly
with friends or, instead, in a low folding canvas chair beneath an umbrella and, cooled
by the salty summer breeze, I will remember every childhood moment with joy and
gratitude.
