Beach Memories and Swimming Pool Dreams

We spent the Fourth of July quietly at home. Like my father before me, this is my preferred way to be. For reasons I may or may not choose to discuss in a future post, the fireworks that were banned this year, due to dangerous drought conditions, were not missed by me one bit.

The night before, I had grilled some burgers and sausage that J picked up at Central Market, so we did plenty of good, old, American-style eating this holiday weekend – probably too much. Yesterday I took the boys to the Shadowglen pool for a good three hours, while J stayed at home relaxing for a bit, before preparing us a delicious dinner of stewed turkey thighs in a peach sauce, with an amazing corn, cilantro, mango, jicama salad. Good summer fare.

While she cooked, we made the best of our pool time. We saw a girl standing on her father’s shoulders, balancing, so of course we had to follow suit. This was great fun for the lads, as I became a human diving platform for them. They took turns standing up, balancing and then diving off my shoulders, doing front and back flips (and more than a few belly and back flops) into the water.

As always, my time with my sons brought back wonderful memories from my own childhood, of playing with my younger brother and my father in various pools and ocean beaches.

The two pools I can remember us visiting are Rocky Ledge, in the hills of North White Plains, in the Quarry Heights section, and the Greenburg Town pool. Both were places where my brother and I could run around pretty safely. Our father wasn’t normally with us there; my mother would take us and then find a shady spot where she would invariably open a book, light up a smoke and relax.

The kind of father-son time I enjoy with Diego and Jackson came, back then, in the form of beach vacations. My parents met on a beach – Water Island Beach on Fire Island, to be exact --, and would periodically return to the Atlantic, their offspring, and dog, in tow. My brother and I spent long days body surfing and otherwise frolicking in those waves and on those beaches.

One of my regrets about where we live is that we’re so far from the Atlantic beaches of my youth. We’ll get back there someday, and man will it be fun for these boys. And for me, it will be nothing less than a beautiful reconnection to my past.