Myrtle Beach Revisited

My parents have had their timeshare since the early 80s, but I hadn’t joined them on their beach vacation for years. Although the residence was showing its age, they’d recently done some renovations to modernize the place. The most notable was the zigzag ramp, which greatly helped shuffle our belongings from the car to the elevator with a dolly.

The room wasn’t ready by the time we arrived. Fortunately, by the time we’d loaded two dollies full of luggage, supplies and food, the room was ready, but we didn’t have a room keycard. Mom, who can’t walk as well as she used to, called the office and asked if her daughters could pick up the keycard, using her ID.

One of the benefits of being a long-term timeshare owner was that they knew Mom even without the ID. My sister and I went down to get four keycards although I was almost sure that my nephew wouldn’t need his own.

If I ever had control over my own schedule again, I’d love to begin my day with either a swim or a walk. Actually the last time I had control over my schedule, I attended a midday yoga class to break up my morning and afternoon blocks of work.

Beach combing for shells every morning definitely checked that box, especially since I like getting some form of daily exercise even when on vacation. Since my sister is an art teacher, she uses the shells in various projects.

Nonetheless, being out in nature while exercising are their own rewards. Plus, I get to hang out with my sister in a totally different setting than watching TV in the den. Half the time when I remark on something that was just shown, she would have already fallen asleep.

Although the premise was shell collecting, our turnaround point was always the pier in the distance. Whatever shells were collected from that excursion were the quota for the morning. To make things official, we’d touch the pier then turn on our heels and trek back.

On the first outing, I shot a collection of jellyfish. My sister, who has apparently watched enough horror movies for a lifetime, marveled at how close I squatted the the subjects to compose the shots. Her paranoia was that one of them would make a sudden move to attack me.

As attractively as I shot the pictures, I still cropped them to capture something of the individuality of each jellyfish. There was absolutely no way I could know the personality of even one jellyfish, but relying on my understanding of genetic variation, something, even if on a genetic level, must be unique to each jellyfish.

Instead, I used the variations found in the setting, the shadows, tentacle position, and occasionally the coloring of the medusa to distinguish among the animals.

One woman beat me to a jellyfish. I’d wanted her to not disturb it before I could take its picture lying washed ashore. She misinterpreted me asking her to stop by informing me that she wouldn’t sting herself. I told her that I wanted to take its picture, so she held it out for me to shoot before she tossed it back into the ocean, which I thought was an unnecessary act.

That was just a gut feeling on my part though. I didn’t know the lifecycle of jellyfish, but I did know that, despite their name, they weren’t fish. So they don’t have to concern themselves with getting oxygen from gills. In other words, they weren’t “fish out of water.”

I later confirmed my gut feeling about those beached mollusks. Although they start dying while they are out of the sea, they are hardier out of water than fish. Dead jellies can still sting, but the do-gooder had carefully picked it up by the medusa. Even if it were already dead, some other marine animal would make a meal out of it.

As we collected shells every morning, I couldn’t help thinking about who was going to love the broken shells. Of course, I was really thinking about flawed individuals and not really inanimate objects. That’s one of the beauties of vacationing…thinking of dreamy things while temporarily out of the daily grind.

As far as Mom was concerned, being on vacation essentially means doing her two favorite things in another setting: cooking and shopping. Not that I’ll ever complain about her cooking, but she initially thought that we weren’t going to dine at a seafood restaurant while in a beach town. She was swiftly out voted.

Normally, I don’t care one bit about shopping. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t planned to buy anything while on vacation other than food, but my first beach walk proved to me that the new sandals I’d bought for just that activity couldn’t handle the terrain. The sand, whether wet or dry, tugged at my cute sandals a little too much. On all other terrain, they did fine. When I saw a pair of knockoff Tevas on sale, I bought a pair for myself and my sister. That strap around the back made all the difference.

On my last day, I saw an impressive humanmade beach scene. At the rate our environment is being slammed, I won’t be too surprised when giant turtles start attacking buildings.

Someone created my favorite sculpture after I left. My sister, who stayed twice as long as me, gifted me the picture. I’d talked about several starfish washed up on a Mexican beach once when I visited. At least this sculpture answered the question of who will love the broken shells.