I'm up early watching the sun rise. I'm sitting sideways on a bright white hammock, gently swaying with the rhythm of the wind. This wind is heavy with salt and stings my sun stripped skin. It blows the palm fronds, making them unruly, just like it blows the wispy curls of my sweet mommas hair. I'm wrapped up in my trip companion: a striped terrycloth bathrobe, pulled over my just slept in skivvies. The hammock sits quite high and is extremely taut. My mom jumped up to snuggle me, only to be bounced back like the beach rocks I tossed at the palm trees yesterday. My dad and I belly laughed for he had just wrestled with the much too tight, much too white hammock as he hoisted up next to me for a sway.
My toes can barely reach the cream colored sand, but they do. I love the way the sand molds under foot. How its cool, smooth, yet rough. I like to watch the grains of sand balance on the top of my feet and then slowly blow away - feeling the sand move from weight to weightless. The seaweed, brought in by the high tide, is still stacked on the beach. I like it this way. But in the next thirty minutes the stacks of spindly, slimy seaweed will be gone. And with it, the sweet smell of the fishy sea.
The waves come and go, crash and flow. The white foam of the fallen crest leaps over the calf-high rock wall. And I can hear the hollow sound of the wind as it passes by. And the soothing voice of the waves as the break against the rocky shore. They don't crash, or lap, or roll. It's more like they tumble. Like a small child teetering on their two spindly legs as they first are learning to do a summersault. They bend at the waist, put their head on the ground and then hoist their legs over. Not much rolling, usually just a jostled landing on the back, then prying up their heavy heads, with a goofy opened mouth grin. Just to do it all again.
