My little brother looking out to the waves

Vacation for my family means South Padre Island. From the prairies of Central South Texas to the southern tip of the state we are willing to travel 6 hours in a cramped Astro Van to reach the condo owned by my great uncle and aunt. As we cross the bridge to Padre, we roll down our windows and breathe deep the salty air 10 degrees cooler than us.


We are beach people. My girlfriend’s family comes to the coast for fishing and shopping and relaxing. My family comes out to get battered by the waves. We play as hard as we work at home. I’m coming away with bruises and bumps and burns and I’m as happy as could be. This is not your typical lay-out-on-the-sand-and-get-a-tan vacation. This is serious playtime. We go out to the second sand bar where the waves are higher and body surf the biggest ones. Sometimes they are big enough to slam us down into the sand below, or spin us round. But we come up laughing, running back to our places for fear of missing ‘the big one.’ And at the end of the day, when it’s time to go inside, we all take one last wave in together.

In order to avoid the people in front of the condo, we drive to the north end of the island, as far as we can go before the road is blocked off by wayward dunes. Depending on the year, the dunes on the undeveloped part of South Padre can be up to 20 feet high. The tide deposits the broken remains of thousands of clams and trash from wild nights in pockets between the mounds. I like to walk among them, looking for shells and loot. The little environmentalist in me tries to summon righteous indignation at all the trash strewn through the sand, but I am constantly distracted by the funny novelty of finding underwear or roll-on deodorant or a single flip-flop in the sand, not to mention the rope and beer bottles, the oil jugs and cans from the 1980’s. They are modern artifacts deposited by the undying ocean for the sunburned archaeologist. I think, what kind of life do these people lead? Even my sisters are forced into the land of imagination by the hot starkness of the dunes. One pops up crowned with a diadem of wild morning-glories, with a train of sand runners. She surveys the domain below her dune like a queen of the Sahara, noting that the realm she rules bears nothing but sand and bones. The other sister uses the blankness of the landscape to let her thoughts wander as she shuffles head down through the sand. My brother is in the trenches, gathering beer-can grenades and preparing for war.

The beach brings out the best in us. We go out to eat at Daddy’s (Cajun), or Louie’s (for the all-you-can-eat crab), and we all (extended family included) sit around the table and gorge on seafood. And we play games until riotous laughter threatens to wake the neighbors. Our naps are long and satisfying, even though our beds are uncomfortable, and we get to spend time with our extended family that we almost never see.

The journey home is uncomfortable because of our sunburn and sand, and whenever we sit still we still feel like we are rocking in the waves. The beach won’t let us forget.  We come back to the prairies tired and worn out, ready for our own beds and a good night’s sleep. I guess our vacation is not about relaxation, but a cleansing of sorts. The sand and the sun and the brine shake off the dust of the year and steal it to some wild place beneath the waves. There the grime of life rests, rolling in the sand until it becomes smooth as sea glass.