“Why is it good to live near a beach with no waves?”

(commissioned by Albert)

I had to wear a yellow swimming cap and earplugs whenever I entered the water, which was every summer in Clearwater, Florida. I was five and then six and then seven. These were Julys.

Dad would stand so the waves were lip-height and say “Hubba Bubba Boose,” letting the water wash in and out of his mouth. He would carry me so my ears wouldn’t get wet. My ears couldn’t get wet because they kept getting infected. My mom would search for sand dollars, which she’d take home by the dozen and bleach. She’d thread a red ribbon through them and make them into Christmas ornaments.

My little sister Peetie and I dug for shells the size of our pinky nails and made sand castles with plastic moulds. A beach cleaning machine raked the beach every morning. The sand was always under repair because of a hurricane. Someone always made a sand sculpture of a naked lady with a seaweed bikini. My shoulders, face, and back always burned to a dark brown within a few days and I’d spend the next week inside in the air conditioning, dabbing on aloe from the garden outside.

The parents would grill hot dogs and hamburgers at the clubhouse across the street. They’d invite all their friends, none of whom had kids my age, so I’d sauna and shuffleboard by myself. There was a pool and sometimes Dad would throw pennies in, which Peetie and I would make a game out of racing to find.

I liked the pool more than the ocean because the ocean waves were too high, so I never knew when I’d get pushed down all of a sudden and come up, sputtering salt water, sand grinding the backs of my teeth, nose burning. I wasn’t supposed to go underwater in the pool either, but either nobody thought about it or they had decided the chlorine made it clean enough for sensitive ears.

One year we were there for my birthday, so my parents bought a cake from Publix and sparklers from a highway fireworks store. You can’t blow sparklers out- you just have to let them burn down. My mom took pictures and then my parents went outside.