A simple idea when you live only three hours from the beach: a call to Ciocia M and a Sunday at the beach is set. And so M arrives Saturday and early Sunday morning, we pack everyone into the car and head for the Isle of Palms just outside of Charleston. And soon almost half the passengers were asleep.

When we arrived, it seemed as if we’d foolishly rushed off without checking the weather. After all, a storm just passed through the region. But we did — really we checked. There was a ten percent chance of rain. But we should have played the lottery today, because we were good with slim odds: we weren’t on the beach more than half an hour before it began raining. We took shelter, dried off, changed clothes, and had our picnic in the back of our van.

The rain passed, the puddles called, and with everything put away, we decided to take a walk on the beach. The rain had mainly stopped, and it seemed foolish not to take the chance.

But the Girl could only go so long before beginning to beg to be able to change back into her swimming suit. She headed off with K to the car,

and E, initially terrified of the ocean and only slightly less so by this time, trudged off after them, not looking back to see if anyone was following along with him.

The Girl headed back to the water,

and the Boy sat with the ladies to watch.

None of us really worried about it: after all, L followed through a similarly trajectory through fear to obsession with the ocean. And while we couldn’t convince her even to approach the water the first time we were at the beach, it wasn’t long before she loved it. Loved it.

And so we tried with the Boy, taking him out in our arms, then convincing him to stand with us.

He took less time than the Girl, though, to become acclimated then filled with joy.

“This is fun!” he squealed.

At this point, there was only one thing left to do: I headed back for my suit and the Boy’s and we got in the water together. While it was fun for a while, though, I am not Mama — nothing can compare to Mama, and so he tended to linger with her.