Yesterday we were in Ashdod. We had been invited to a wedding and decided that rather than drive back home in the middle of the night, we would stay over at a hotel in Ashdod. We drove there early in the day so that we would have a chance to enjoy the beach. We found the beach almost empty of people and exceedingly clean. We left our belongings and went into the water. The water was cool at first, but after a while, it seemed almost too warm, but we enjoyed riding the waves and bouncing and getting jostled and tasting the sea water as it dripped into our mouths…
But just as memories are jogged by a song that one associates with a person or event or a scent, like the perfume someone used to wear, so were my memories activated by the undulating waves and the sound of their peaking and breaking. And suddenly, there was my grandmother.
She appeared in my memory as she had been that summer when I was turning 7. My parents had rented a huge house in Atlantic City along with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. We all were in Atlantic City for the summer. The men (my father, grandfather, and uncle) remained in Philadelphia working, visiting us on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and driving back in the mornings and spending from Saturday night to Monday mornings with us. The three women (my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt) had two workers who kept the house clean and helped watch the three children (me, my 2 year old sister and my 2 year old cousin). Their lives were pretty much perfect.
They would be free to do whatever they wanted and we, the children, would appear only upon request. So each afternoon, we were taken to the beach to romp and play and when we got tired or the women got tired of us, we were taken back to the house, fed a snack, bathed, and dressed for dinner. In those days, Atlantic City was quite an elegant place and people literally had dresses made to wear on the boardwalk in the evening. I remember two dresses that had been made for me. One was a lavendar organdy dress trimmed with lace and it had hand-embroidered flowers on it. The other was a blue organdy dress that had a blue plaid overskirt, also of organdy. The dresses had matching taffeta slips and had to be starched and ironed for each wearing.
That summer, I was unlucky enough to develop a fungus on my feet. I remember my mother taking me to a foot doctor (then they were chiropodists) who would have me hold my feet in a whirlpool for 15 minutes or so and then coat my feet with a thick yellow creamy substance. Then he would wind gauze around my feet and tell me to be sure not to get them wet. This went on for a number of weeks.
Well, my grandmother couldn’t stand the fact that I would not be able to go into the ocean for several weeks, so she would be sure each day to pick me up in her arms and stand in the water with me suspended between her arms with my feet out of the water. She would jump with waves and I would get wet everywhere except on my feet. She would stay there with me for a long time and finally she would carry me back to the shore.
Ever since, jumping the waves has always reminded me of my grandmother and of how much she loved me.
And it set me to thinking…
A week ago I returned from 9 days in Beijing with my oldest granddaughter. We had a wonderful time. She laughed and smiled and enjoyed seeing all of the beautiful structures and gardens and she enjoyed walking through the colorful markets and bargaining and buying wonderful things and interacting with the Chinese people. I wonder, though, what it may be that someday will trigger her memory of me and will she realize how much I love her?
