Scarborough
Beach

summer 1968, Narragansett – I arrived at The Christian Brothers Novitiate in Narragansett, Rhode Island on Sunday, June 30, 1968. Several days later, a group of us went to Scarborough Beach – sand and surf as far as the eye could see. It was my first time standing on the shore of the Atlantic.
The summer of ’68 was a summer of new friendships; of walking in the surf; of praying Lauds, Vespers and Compline; of evening walks through the Brothers’ cemetery and laughing out loud. It was a summer of still ocean waters, of rip-tides and warnings. I learned to body surf that long ago summer; to capture the wave and ride it in. I also learned that after being in the ocean you had to take a shower.
On a hot summer day, after Manual Labor, several of us would walk down Ocean Road to the beach and enter the park from the north end. The pavilions, the bathrooms, the concessions stands, the parking lots were all on the south end of the park. The north end was secluded, remote, lifeguard free. It was guarded by giant boulders and bordered by a wooded cliff-side that we called The Rocks. The cliff-side would later be designated a state park.
One day, because the tide was in and I didn’t want to walk in the surf with my shoes, I cut through the boulders to get to the beach. Coming around the largest of the standing stones, I came upon two guys kissing. Had never seen anything like that before; I just kept walking.
By early September the summer people were gone and we had the beach to ourselves. One Saturday morning we showed up to find that the entire strip had been raked. WTF – who rakes sand and why would someone rake a beach?
It really was a summer of firsts.

the
Hamptons
ocean side

summer 1975, East Hampton – Cynthia and Jay had a house in the Hamptons and they had invited us for the weekend; we braved the Long Island Expressway to visit them.
Fifty years after Gatsby, the Hamptons still had their snob-appeal, their wealth, their singular ocean, their jaded romanticism. They still pulled at New Yorkers, they still insisted.
John Belushi, of SNL fame, rented the house next door to Cynthia and Jay. Craig Claiborne, food critic for the New York Times, was a neighbor.
While in their ocean, I got caught in a rip-tide and got tossed about. It scared the shit out of me. This wasn’t the ocean of Naragansett; it was a violent, undisciplined thing. It was the last time I ever stepped foot in the Atlantic.

Anini Beach,
Kaua’i

winter 1990s, Anini Beach – My cousins had a time-share in Princeville, Kaua’i and for several years I joined them, in mid-winter, for a week of sun and warmth. Instead of reviving my love of sun and surf, these sojourns added to my list of reasons to avoid the beach. In the Hamptons I resolved to never go in the ocean again; in Kaua’i I made a promise to stay out of the sun.
We went to every public beach on the island and where R&D would bask in the sunlight, I would hide under a tree in the shade. Eventually, I stopped going to the beach and stayed by the pool, under an umbrella reading my book – no sand, no glare and when I got tired of the heat, I went inside to lounge in the AC.
The other issue I couldn’t reconcile was the time it took to get to Kaua’i – it was a longer trip than going to Italy. Forget that – Italy was way more fun and it wasn’t littered with old, white people baking in the sun. I could be in Bologna, eating a gelato – nocciola of course – and still get a blush of sun.

Belmonte
Marina

fall 2014, Belmonte Marina – Rick, Sarah and I were in Italy for a three-week stay. We began in the Val di Noto and made our way through Calabria, to Naples and then onto Rome.
In Calabria we stayed in an albergo deffuso in Belmonte. Their interest in Calabria was Aprigliano; they wanted to see the place they had heard so much about; they wanted to see our house where we raised a pig under the stairs; they wanted to see where Ciccio, Mafalda and Mario lived before emigrating to Canada.
In Aprigliano, they got to visit with my cousin who had rehabbed what was once our house and Za Peppina’s house into a beautiful modern home. The outside stairs and the pig stall were consigned to the rubble of the demolition. We also visited the chapel at Portosalvo and they ate figs that they grabbed off a tree on the side of the road – how very Italian and how not at all American.
The evening before we were to head out for Naples, Rick went down to the beach because he wanted to swim in the Mediterranean; one would think that I would have gone with him – I didn’t.
So, I come full circle. I began in Paola afraid to get into a rowboat and I ended in Belmonte unwilling to get my feet wet in the sea that is in my DNA.

…..Final Note

• Of the kids I grew up with in Sault Ste Marie, none of us are sun and beach people. My cousins, on the other hand, are all sun worshipers.
• I put on a swim-suit for the first time in years, so I can go into the condo pool with 3-year-old Gus.
• The Italy of my mind isn’t the beaches of Rimini, Sanigallia, Tropea or Paola. It’s the hills of Calabria, the meadows of Tuscany, the farms of Emilia Romagna, the sunflowers of Le Marche, the marshes of Venice, the olive groves of Umbria, the undulations of Sicily. It’s the landscapes, the ancient, terracotta landscapes that calls to my soul.