By Ellen O’Donnell
August 2020
The summer of 2020 turned out to be a master storyteller, weaving a promising, vaguely suspicious plot with a wink and a smile.
She was an unreliable narrator.
I swapped my lake cottage for a house near the Rhode Island shore for a week in July and each day immersed myself in the sharp saltiness of the Atlantic Ocean. Though bathed in the heat of July sun, the northeast Atlantic never truly warms, yet there is something glorious about the first shallow wave that shocks your thighs as the water rises to envelop your waist. You make a choice—retreat or advance. I dive in above the next crest of a wave, and my calcified joints and achy places rejoice in a remembered fluidity.
I feel young in the Atlantic.
After a few breaststrokes near the ocean floor, my arms cut through soft water, and a flutter kick propels me toward glints of light at the surface. I emerge, roll over to my back and allow my natural buoyancy to suspend me in that beautiful moist place between sky and earth, where sound is muffled, and I feel weightless and free. After a short time, I hitch a ride with a wave and lope with a confident stride to my beach chair and a book that couldn’t hold my attention in my COVID-safe Connecticut cottage. As my toes caress the wide, soft sand, the sun drinks away the salty sea from my skin.
I walk Newport Harbor alone at night, popping in and out of shops with limited capacity and mask requirements. I cross space with fellow Americans out for a stroll in that historic harbor, some walking dogs, window shopping, or simply getting an ice cream cone to devour with a backdrop of yachts and wooden sailboats at rest. We are all just waking from our pandemic slumber, safe in the knowledge that Rhode Island leads the nation in low COVID infection. I pick up my take-out seafood from The Black Pearl and hope the waitress, handing me the squeaky plastic containers, notices the appreciation in my eyes, the hint of a smile that is hard to communicate with cloth around my mouth. I meander back to my temporary home, transfer the meal to a proper plate, and forget that eating alone is not so much a choice anymore, but feels different this night. Eventually, I give in to the delicious, deep sleep of a sun-drenched body.
As the week draws to a close, I shoo away the image of returning to Connecticut and linger at Sachuest Beach a little longer on my final afternoon. By late day, most visitors begin shaking sandy towels, folding beach chairs, and balancing bags and coolers like sea-level Sherpas as they march to the boardwalk and their overheated cars. I dally and delay, diving in for a final swim, and return for one last sit. A group of young people begins piling off the boardwalk and onto the sand, giggling and shoving each other, one with a football, others with lacrosse sticks, and several lugging huge coolers that take two to carry. They choose a spot that feels perilously close to me, but I avert my eyes and return to my book. As they settle in, I peek from beneath the brim of my straw hat and count. Twenty-three, nearly two dozen boys and girls my daughter’s age doing what I loved doing more than a quarter of a century earlier; flirting, wrestling, shoving, teasing, playing, and drinking in the open air of a public beach.
I resist the temptation to scold and refocus on the finished fiction in my hands. From the corner of my eye, I spot a man, easily in his sixties, approach the gaggle and hear this, “Hey kids, I just want to remind you all that you should space out a little. We got a good thing going here, you know….”
I love that man I do not know. I love his tone, respect, and discipline.
And then I hear laughter and watch a golden-skinned, athletic boy approach him, beer in hand, “Dude, mind your own business.”
The man waves his hand in disgust and walks away. It is my cue to dog-ear the page in my almost finished book, shake my sand-laden towel, repack my bag, fold my chair and head out.
As I pull out of the parking lot, a state trooper is chatting with the parking attendant. I barely hesitate, roll down my window and say, “Hey, I love this beach, and I love that Rhode Island is kicking COVID’s ass, but,” and I hesitate until the trooper urges me on with a smile and nod.
“But…there’s a huge group of kids that just arrived. No COVID precautions.”
The trooper drops his head and peers at me from under his very serious hat, “Thank you, ma’am. Whereabouts?”
“Second boardwalk to the left of the lifeguard chair.” And I point behind me, a little embarrassed by the tattle.
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll go break ’em up now.”
He tips his cap, and I drive away.
The following morning, the harbor grows distant in my rearview mirror as I cross the Newport Bridge. I can almost feel the suffocation of late July humidity in Western Connecticut.
Two weeks later, an alert buzzes on my phone, COVID Spike in Rhode Island Closes State Beaches.
I felt anger at the deceptive clues peppered by the summer of 2020’s unreliable narrator and annoyed at the bronzed young bodies who blithely ignored her. Those twenty-three kids were merely a representation of an impatient nation. Now I wondered if they missed the Atlantic Ocean, too.