On the beach and loving it... sort of

Because “I don’t feel so good” is the way most holiday events begin in my family, I figured I’d get the ball rolling early this season by showing up at the first celebration looking like something a vulture would eat.

I say that because we were in the hotbed of Florida. Hungry buzzards searched overhead, a seagull landed a splat on the bare midriff of my niece, an egret stalked and sucked a frog, pelicans swooped and swallowed while we coughed and sneezed. The red tide was up and in unison we choked “I don’t feel so good,” yet feared if we didn’t look perky we’d become snack food.

Some families bond with upbeat tales. My family bonds by relating our latest experiences that we’d be too embarrassed to tell anyone else but for some reason feel compelled to confess as soon as our eyes meet.

And yet we were at the beach and we were happy.

One of us had just returned from her latest seasickness adventure, someone else couldn’t help relate the time a squad of firemen greeted her after she fainted at a restaurant, another reminded us she’d passed out after one sip of a Bahama Mama. OK, that last one was me.

Nothing like stories of brief stops in an emergency room to keep my family in stitches.

But since I’d arrived at the first big holiday with a giant boot on my leg from a broken ankle last month, I didn’t have to stretch too far to keep up with the joys of sharing our worst nightmares.

I was the entertainment and boy was it appreciated.

First, we had to figure out how to get me onto the sand without the boot touching down, without being unstable, without having to hobble far from the land to the water, and without annoying anyone since they were bouncing along while I made my way with crutches that appeared to be scaffolding holding up decaying driftwood from Cuba.

But at least we were at the beach.

Then there were the trash bags, not the public ones lining the inside of metal bins, but the ones wrapped around the bulbous leg in tones of moldy seaweed green and fixed with thick rubber bands to keep out the grit. Trendy.

Eventually I did get to the water’s edge, just as everyone else was ready to cut and run.

But at least we were at the beach.

Curiously, thinking she was part of another family, we’d begun the holiday weekend with one relative announcing we would not deal with any real issues, but spend the days together in mindless reverie. Games, movies, too much food, maybe even dancing, she yelped.

That lasted one day, with some family members sulking in corners trying so hard to have a lighthearted romp as if we were in any other group, when in truth fun to us is weighing in on why each of our lives is falling apart.

We almost forgot who we were.

Fortunately, sick of our carefree charade, we soon returned to our common roots and allowed ourselves to blurt and babble in that way you can’t with any other soul who doesn’t share the same screwed-up genes. No one had a Bahama Mama. But we did have a great time, considering us being us, and as the weekend rolled on, we felt pretty darn good, traitorous as it was to admit.

How lucky were we. We were even at the beach!

Donna Debs is a longtime freelance writer, a former KYW radio news reporter, and a certified Iyengar yoga teacher. She lives in Tredyffrin. She’d love to hear from you at ddebs@comcast.net.