Spring beach time, 1989: not quite summer, not quite anything else. The sand is still cool enough to register, the wind sharp in that early-season way that keeps adults zipped up and kids unfazed.
In the photo, my mom walks along the packed shoreline holding my hand. I’m about a year and a half old—still learning balance, still trusting that the ground will mostly behave. A red sweatshirt is tied around her waist like a practical marker of foresight. She carries a weekend bag, the kind you pack when you don’t yet know how long you’ll stay or what the weather will decide. Behind us, tire tracks cut clean parallel lines, evidence that the beach has already been crossed, flattened, crossed again.
The best throwback photos aren’t dramatic. They look like errands. A walk. A hand held without discussion. Forward motion without a destination. The details date it—the haircut, the sandals, my small late-80s outfit—but the feeling isn’t stuck in a decade. It’s the ordinary certainty of being guided across uneven ground before you know how to do that yourself.
Spring at the beach was never about swimming. It was about arriving early, when the shoreline was still half-awake, and letting the day remind you how to be outside.
A picture doesn’t bring the past back. It just proves it happened. Sometimes that’s enough.
