Coffee with sprinkles

When I was a child, we used to spend a good portion of the summer on the Jersey shore.
We would stay with my grandparents who lived across the street from 2nd Ave beach. I imagine the landscape looks nothing like it did when we there last, over 25 years ago. My Papa was a wheel of fortune caller inside of a part of the park called the palace. There was a merry-go-round, tunnel of love and haunted mansion type of thing. The highlight of the summer besides for a visit to Carvel was a free stuffed animal from my grandfather's booth.
We'd go to the beach every day and after the sunburning process was completed it would be mostly swimming and watching the older ladies with their eastern European accents and swim- dresses hold on to the massive ropes that cordoned off our part of the Atlantic.
My parents never swam they played bridge, slept, and read.
Up until we moved out and back from the country, my kids and I spent part of every summer at a local public pool they took lessons in the late afternoon and we'd spend most days swimming and then waiting for the adult swim to end. Most moms don't swim. They have in numbers, said that they don't like to swim in public. I swam all the time. When I walked around I covered up the goods with a sarong, but nothing stopped me from getting into water. For some reason, it suspends my self conscious nature. It's liberating and gravity free joy. And, it's where you can play with your kids in a very physical way that makes them both feel safe and a little scared simultaneously. They're all too big to play with me in the water now, but I still swim with them, as if I were a teenagemom.