I adore people-watching at the beach.
They are completely free – shouting with excitement, jumping into the water, talking with their mouths full, careless and light.
I, however, don’t like myself at the beach.
I’m grumpy. I run away from the sun like it has a personal issue with me. I apply endless layers of sunscreen and I hate the sand sticking to every part of my body. I hate putting my clothes back on while I’m still slightly wet. And the entire time, I am thinking about the shower I’ll have to take when I get home.
But I love watching everyone else.
Imagine this: a guy in his late twenties sitting on a chair under a red-and-white umbrella, sunglasses on, black bucket hat pulled over his head, staring at people.
Creepy, right?
If you ever see me staring at your direction at the beach, I promise I am genuinely admiring the scene.
I like watching the father who has been digging the same hole with his son for forty minutes.
I like the mother yelling at her kids and their friends to come eat, and them not listening. I like the group of friends who somehow brought enough food to survive three business days.
I like the kid crying because his brother took his toys, as their mother yells from a distance for him to give them back, knowing very well he has no intention of doing so.
I like people coming out of water with their hair dripping, looking terrible, and not a care in the world.
Nobody looks particularly dignified at the beach; people seem to forget themselves there.
Someone is always shouting someone else’s name from very far away.
Someone is always eating a sandwich that has, whether they know it or not, at least three grains of sand in it.
Someone is always asleep with their mouth open, while someone else keeps checking their tan every five minutes, convinced they’re not getting any darker.
And for a few hours, nobody seems embarrassed about any of it.
I sit under my umbrella, reapplying sunscreen for the seventeenth time, and watch as life at the beach unfolds.
Sometimes though, a scene feels strangely familiar – a family laughing too loudly, two siblings arguing over something completely insignificant.
Someone running out of the water to tell everyone what just happened as if nobody has ever experienced the sea before.
And suddenly, I’m not under the red-and-white umbrella anymore, I’m younger.
I’m at the beach near the refugee camp with my family, and I don’t remember anyone bringing sunscreen.
I remember the sea.
I remember being in the water, when, somehow, a fish jumps straight into my lap. A real fish!
I remember screaming at the top of my lungs that it was going to eat me, while my entire family burst out laughing. The more I panicked, the harder they laughed, which, at the time, felt like a serious betrayal.
For years afterward, someone would bring up the fish.
I remember going home salty and exhausted but happy.
My sibling and I would immediately start fighting over who got to shower first.
‘I’m going first!’
‘No, I said it first.’
‘I’m older, you should respect that!’
‘That doesn’t mean anything’
Back then, apparently, this was a serious problem.
My grandfather was still there but I don’t remember what he said that day.
That’s the annoying thing about memories. Nobody tells you which ordinary afternoon you should be paying attention to.
You don’t know that one day, you’ll try to reconstruct it from pieces: a fish, wet clothes, somebody laughing, an argument over the shower.
I watch the families around me now and wonder if they know…
Probably not.
The children will grow up – some will move away, and someone’s chair will eventually become empty. The stories they are living today will become the stories they keep repeating tomorrow.
Maybe I don’t adore looking at people at the beach because they are free, maybe I adore it because they remind me of a time when I was too… Back when my grandfather was still alive and I was not sitting under an umbrella watching someone else have a beach day.
I was having one.
