People With Life

11.

"Let's jump in the "wah-tah",

To get out the "sum-mah

Sun!"

I watched as the light glimmered golden off drops of the ocean on their wet skin and made their eyes sparkle in the effortless beauty of youth. They built castles in the sand, swung on tire swings and swings made of nothing more than a wooden plank and two ropes hung from tree branches between the main house and cottage and dived with Mike off the water trampolines. They took buckets of sand and saltwater on the reefs to collect snails. The house keepers yelled when they were caught running into the house, their clothes wet and their feet coated in sand.

Grace, Katie and I set towels and beach umbrellas out on the sand and brought out the coolers of drinks and food. We lay on the beach, letting the sun soak into our bodies and relax us. I meditated on a kaleidoscope of refracted light through the slits of my squinted eyes, the sun shining directly on my face, breeze in the wings and birds soaring high up in the bright blue sky.

For a while I heard nothing but the sea moving back and forth and the wind in the trees. Then at the water's edge the sound of a ball being kicked and splashing in the water and the excited yelling of children as they and the boys kicked the ball back and forth.

We watched them for a while and then challenged them to a race along the water's edge. I wasn't sure if it was the extra tennis I had been playing or the fact that I felt more energetic, but I beat them all out, running faster than I thought I could, willing myself forward. I sometimes surprised myself.

John caught up to me at the finish, laughing and panting in breathless excitement like a child. He scooped me up easily, grinning from ear to ear and gave me a kiss. "Fast little thing you are," he said, at which I laughed.

"So she's good on land, but how does she fare in the water?" he said before throwing me in.

I gasped in shock, surfacing and trying to catch my breath but finding it hard due to my laughter. I splashed John and pulled him in with me. Floating on the water on my back, I closed my eyes, seeing nothing but the brightness of the sun, feeling nothing but its warmth on my face and with my ears half submerged, hearing nothing but my even breaths.

For the rest of the morning we went snorkelling and shell collecting with the kids. Mike tried not so successfully to help them fly a kite in the sea breeze. When we thought the boys were swimming too far out, we frantically called them back in. They'd come back to shore soaking wet and laughing unconcerned, playfully shaking water onto us like dogs as we lay on our towels.

"Jerks," Katie scolded while I stuck my tongue out at them.

John plopped down next to me on the towel, pulling me into an embrace and making me wetter. He smiled mischievously like a boy, then intensely, like a man, and wiped a bead of water off my cheek while I stared into his sapphire eyes.

We went to the main house for lunch. It was large and decorated less casually than the little cottage. The stone steps and old wood floors reminded me of hauntingly old cobbled architecture. The food was laid out buffet style in the formal dining room. I saw John's father again briefly as he fixed plates of food for the twins and chatted brightly with other members of John and Mike's family. I sat and ate with Connie, Grace, Marley and John and his little brothers who were as energetic as ever and had to be coaxed by us to sit down and eat something before running off again to play. Katie spoke with Mike's brother and his friends. Mike was nowhere to be seen.

After lunch, we took the canoes out on the water. I sat with Mike in his canoe and he paddled out like his life depended on it. After a while I stopped paddling too.