The Ritual.
I’m stretched out on a beach towel, my pale skin slathered in SPF, drinking a Bud Light fast enough so it won’t get warm. Considering the sweltering temperature, I gotta drink pretty fast. My best friend Caroline is on the towel beside me. Between us is a Styrofoam cooler packed with beer, water, and empty Pop-Tart wrappers (that was breakfast). As is our custom, we started the day by hauling the cooler (packed exactly the same way every morning) across scorching sand to the water’s edge.
“Ready for another one?” she asks.
I shake my can. Nearly empty. “Sure, beer me,” I tell her.
“So anyway, I’m learning I just have to say no to my mother. “
“Totally, but it’s so hard.”
“So hard.”
She hands me the ice-cold can. I take the last warm swig of the other one and pass her the empty. Every year, we discuss the same topics—men, mothers, and career.
“So just listen to this. My mom is trying to get me to come home every single weekend in August to go to engagement parties and weddings for all her friends’ kids. I barely even know these people. Alexis Smith was like in third grade when we graduated from high school.”
“Isn’t she a little young to be getting married?”
“That’s another story …”
I pop open the cold beer. I look out at the waves rolling in and the tattooed teenagers frolicking near the water’s edge. My koozie says Are you as stupid as you look?
“So you are going home every weekend in August?”
“Probably.”
How It Got Started.
It was nearly July 4 in 1997 and I had no plans for the long weekend. I was twenty-six and working in the tiny newsroom of a suburban Atlanta newspaper. I had recently broken up with a boyfriend and was feeling gloomy about spending the long weekend alone.
“I just want to go the beach,” I whined into the phone to Caroline.
“Me too,” she whined back. Caroline and I grew up together in Tennessee and both now lived in Atlanta. Like me, she worked way too many hours and hadn’t gotten around to making plans.
