Time and tide

I have said that there are few finer places to vacation than Cape Cod, Ma. in August. I know there are many other fine places, but for me the cool temperatures, the breezes, the water, the sights just rap gently on a chord in my being.

And following a wonderful week which saw, my wife and I and our two young adult children and the dog together on Cape Cod I am feeling the tug as I return to work.

But somewhere in South Eastern Massachusetts, probably in an affluent suburb of Boston, is a kid who most assuredly is feeling that pull more than I.   I think his name is Michael, or William , John, Jimmy or Robert ---no Blaine or Harrison or Rennard is he.  I don't really know what his name is so I will just call him the Boy on the Rock.  But I know he is an American boy.

He was of that magic age,  around 12 to 13, the age before girls but not long before, when school is still the place where your friends are and not the place to launch you to some college, when summer is still a time  without a job or a care.  When the Red Sox matter.

I came upon this kid out of the blue as I walked the tidal flats of Orleans.  There is a rock there , deposited millions of years ago by some runaway bulldozer made of ice 1000 feet thick.  And ever since being deposited bythe glacier it has been the depository of choice for millions of sea birds.

I actually spotted the boy on the rock with his two friends as they did the 12 year old thing. No parents within a half mile.  Where in today's scheme do you ever see a kid without some hovering mom or dad.   They were aimlessly wandering, splashing through tidal pools and clearly doing the countdown to the end of summer.  I imaginged them to have been summer time friends who just happened to have combined by virtue of their ages and proximity of the family vacation homes into a gang of three.  I somehow knew this to be the case for their burnished tan shoulders spoke of at least a month   of being shirtless and shoeless on the beaches of Cape Cod Bay.

I watched from a distance and somehow I knew that they would part company at the end of the summer and return to winter homes and other home town friends.  I also knew that the boy on the rock was not about to let go.  He ran ahead and with bare feet climbed on the barnacle covered rock asking the others to join him.  They demurred, being put off by bird poop.  The boy on the rock stating that he did not care.   He climbed up and stood atop his perch and he was for a few more days a free man, enjoying his life.

Today, I imagine him sitting in a stifling classroom looking out the window longing for the breeze and the smell of the salt water and thinking how restricting it is to be wearing shoes, wondering what his summer time friends are up to.

Hey kid , I am thinking of you.  Don't let it go.