Time and Tide

A Many Voices Guest Post by Paula Halpin

As the dog days of summer wind down, I’ve been thinking back to my childhood in the 1950s. One image that presents itself is the seaside village of Skerries near Dublin where my family went for holidays. I see myself racing across white sand so hot it stings my feet and then plunging into waves so cold they turn my lips blue in minutes. 

Hot beach. Freezing water. The paradox of the Irish Sea in August.

I remember the air smelling of shellfish and the black-green seaweed that clung to the wet sand. Shivering girls and boys would dash from the water to be embraced in striped towels by grandmothers whose bodies stayed warm because they never swam.  At most, they would remove their shoes and stockings and paddle along the water’s edge, occasionally darting away from the onrushing waves which threatened to soak their cotton summer dresses. 

Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

The grandmothers would rub us dry and kiss us on the cheek for good measure and usher us under sun umbrellas ranged along the wind-blown grasses at the top of the beach. Mothers would inspect our freckled sweet-smelling skin for sunburn and coat our necks and shoulders with the cream they would normally use on babies’ bottoms to protect against nappy rash. 

When the sun was at its highest, we would gather under the make-shift awning set up by the men and have ham sandwiches, and potato crisps, and fig rolls, washed down by milky black tea. 

After lunch, we would nap for an hour -- without complaint. Refreshed, we would take our afternoon dip, and then explore the tidal pools at the base of the rocks. Finds might include periwinkles or baby mussels or, on an especially good day, bright pink and lavender molluscs.  All things to marvel at and poke with a stick.

In the early evenings, we would pack up the yellow and blue buckets and spades and return to our rented cottages on Main Street. Cottage front doors were painted in primary colours. The most prized had thatched roofs. We would change into clean clothes and straggle behind a convoy of parents and grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles as they headed out for dinner at the Stoop Your Head Pub. Along the way, we might pause to listen to the barking of the harbour seals.  

Sea air-ravenous, we would devour baskets of chips at Stoops with bowls of Dublin Bay Prawns brought fresh that day from the fishing boats bobbing in the harbour. 

Dinner would be followed by tubs of whipped ice cream, purchased at the stand on the pier run by the Parisi family. The evening would end with pongo (a bingo forerunner) in the church hall. All were welcome, even the atheists.  

Yawning and loose-limbed, we would saunter home. The moon would be shining shafts of light on the calm and watchful sea. We would hear in the distance the band warming up for the nightly dance at the Red Island holiday camp out on the headland.

We would follow these rituals every day for the month of July, arriving back in Dublin in August, our bodies a healthy golden brown, our hair bleached and crackling dry from the sun and the sea breeze. It would take weeks to get the last grains of sand out of shoes and suitcases. In the winter, we would lie in our city beds and dream of waking again to the high-pitched cry of the gulls and the sound of the waves rolling in and rolling out.

It has been more than 60 years since my last time in Skerries. I hear from family that kids are still building sandcastles and collecting shells, encased these days in what look like wetsuits and wearing hats and sunblock. For their part, grandmothers are now wearing stylish one-piece bathing suits and swimming far out into the surf. 

Stoop Your Head is still serving up chips doused in malt vinegar, but prawns are seldom on the menu these days because of scarcity and high prices. Like many fish species in European waters, they are on track to have disappeared by 2100 due to climate change, overfishing and mercury pollution. By that time, the Dublin coastline could be under water because of rising sea levels and storm surges. Skerries might disappear all together. Perish the thought.

In my 70s now, I am living far from the Irish Sea.  It is high summer. I’m watching my 10-year-old granddaughter run to the end of the dock, leap in the air, her skinny legs akimbo, shrieking with joy as she splashes down into the still-icy Gatineau River.   

She is aware of the deadly forest fires raging across Canada. She knows about the choking smoke that blanketed her village in the spring. She has heard about rivers in past years breaking their banks and flooding homes not that far from where she lives. But she is not worrying about all that now because she is a child and lives in the present.

And I am not sad at that moment either. I’ve taken a break from my eco-anxiety and allowed myself to be transported back to the beach of my childhood. I am floating on my back in the pristine sea alongside my siblings and cousins. We are describing for each other the animal shapes we see in the clouds that scud across the pure blue sky. We are deciding which flavour of ice cream we will dive into after dinner tonight.

Paula Halpin is a retired magazine editor living in the beautiful Gatineau Hills of Western Quebec. Grateful for finally having the time, perspective and opportunity to write and share stories.

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Many Voices will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. In September, poet and visual artist Rosemary Starace will join me for Part 3 of our inquiry into How Art Heals: Remembering Wholeness. All subscribers are now welcome to read and comment on Many Voices posts.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.