Little butts, smiling faces, sun hats. Tan and not so tan bodies, screeching, laughing, whining, running. Goggles, Speedos, tan and insecure, fit bodies. Youth, love, nagging, Jersey and New York accents. Talk of the flavor of salt water flavored with warnings and precaution . 

Sand in every orifice, lots of white privilege trying to look less white and more privileged. Cellulite, aging blonde mothers passing the youth batons to their unsuspecting daughters, a lost child possibility seen in the mother’s body language, polished pink toes, books beings gulped and drunken feverishly knowing that their reading time is limited.She stops for a shell, continues looking for more as she breaks away from her focus on digging. Cameras capturing the pleasantries of tender and infrequent family moments.“Say cheese,” that moment witnessed by a stranger who happens to be photographing it with her words.

Tanned, round grandmothers with their grandchildren freeloading off their beachfront condo for April vacation.Mothers trying to look hip in their skirted tankinis, mothers still trying to wear bikinis, some successful, and some not. Sandy hands, familiar smells, tingly skin warning its time is up but the sprit screaming for more. Bobbing heads in a distance in a vast sea that is way bigger and more knowledgeable than we.Feeling blessed and lonely in the same breath wishing for a participating companion. Dads with their kids in the moment not rushing, not driving, not outfitted with cell phones and blackberries.A bored man walks by, ten steps ahead of his partner, scanning for something, maybe a younger cuter blonde-their body language not even pretending to be connected. She stops and stares.

I miss my family here with me.

The father looks at the young girl briefly, perhaps remembering when his wife and he met or when his daughter was that age.

Sand in the butt, she pulls her little Barbie pink bottoms  down to get it out and her father assists, a great wonderful moment.