Monthly Archives: August 2011

I’d forgotten what it is to shower and have the smell of the sea pour from your skin and hair. It gets into and under you; when I peel off my bathing suit curls of dried seaweed fall to the ground, swirl down the drain, back to where they came from.

I don’t even spend much time in the water, forcing myself in each morning because the air here is so dry I don’t feel hot. Once I take the plunge into the cold water and acclimate I don’t quite know what to do with myself. I hang there, floating in the water just off shore, rocking in the gentle waves. Soon, I climb out, up the steep pebbled incline to my purple flip-flops, waiting to take me safely across the three meters of scorching stones where I flop onto my lounge chair without drying off. Somehow that seems decadent to me, climbing out of the sea and lying down without drying myself, allowing the sun to bake me dry.

I am taking great pleasure this year in watching my usually highly-protected pale skin slowly turn from ivory to gold to brown. This year, just this once, I will allow the sun to sink into me. After two long, gray, damp winters I feel like I am finally drying out and putting something into reserves for the next dark season.

The Aegean is different from the Atlantic, saltier, clearer. The drop off to the depths is steeper, the waves gentler. But the waves, the sun, and the saltwater are enough to take me back to childhood memories of digging in the sand, though there is none here, of going to Cape May with friends and reveling in the sun all day and the feeling of slightly exhausted well-being at night.

I haven’t been in the sea or ocean for more than ten years, I didn’t even know I missed it. Moving to new cities, starting new jobs, new circles of friends, all these things distracted me from the simple pleasures of floating in the waves, listening to the surf, and, especially, just resting my eyes on the smooth, uncluttered expanse of blue.

What forgotten pleasures have disappeared from your life? How can you get a taste of them back? Share them in the comments here.