Adventures at Sea

When my mom suggested I extend my summer trip in France by two weeks to go to the beach on the Atlantic coast of France I couldn’t think of any reason why not.  I was picturing scenes I’ve seen from the Mediterranean with vast expanses of beaches and gorgeous tan bodies littering the beach. What I found were small private beaches and lots of boating opportunities. Less tanning time and more activities-not my idea of relaxing. The sand was unpleasant to walk on and there was constantly a cold breeze. And just like my trip to my aunt’s country home on Bastille Day I was awkwardly between the two age groups. The party was: Susan*, her husband Thomas, her children Kathy 16, Jim 14, Karen 7, Mary an unmarried sister of Susan, Susan’s old friend from high school Tina, her Italian husband and their two bilingual children.

Kathy and I were in the best guest bedroom: it had a big view of the ocean but was detached from the house so no bathroom or sink and it was all windows so no place to change and the door opened outside for easier mosquito access-my favorite. My mornings were spent shopping at the open market for fresh (aka living) fish. Other than fish I ate a variety of other seafood: muscles, oysters (alive or dead-I was too timid to ask), small shrimp that’s legs got caught in the back of my throat (thank god for the pineau cognac aperitif to wash them down-probably my favorite drink my whole trip), large shrimp that required surgery to take the heads and shells off, and some sort of shelled thing the little girls had collected on the beach that morning.
  And my preferred afternoon activity was tanning with Kathy. Unfortunately I often ended up on a boat despite my best efforts. My favorite was the catamaran (a boat I’d never heard of before)-there’s nothing like Tom yelling at me in French to grab the sail or some other part of the boat, I’m still notsure-I don’t know those words in English! They told me I would get wet-I think they meant soaked. The craft was more like a small raft than a boat and we were sitting in the water skimming the heads of giant jellyfish. Since I proved unhelpful at any task on the boat my job was to sit in front and break the waves with my face. Whenever I tried to turn around so I could wipe water out of my eyes Tom would tell me to turn around and enjoy the view-yeah you try enjoying the view with an ocean in your eyeballs and nothing to hold on to to avoid falling on the jellyfish. I thought about throwing “I can’t swim” on the table, but every time I opened my mouth the salt water would fly in. Tina was the third on the boat with us; but I’m not sure we really were on the same boat because when we got off she told everyone it was the best thing she had ever done and she wished she could do it  everyday.
   My other boat trip was on a motor boat. I thought that I would be dryer, but once again I thought wrong. With Jim steering we tailgated another boat (with an entire ocean I’m not really sure why we couldn’t find our own spot) and I was once again splashed in the face with water (it did wonders for my hair too). Fantastic.   
    So my last day, Friday; the day before we were to leave for a big wedding I decided to take it easy, put my foot down (on solid ground) and not to go on boats and just bide my time until it was time to go. So I went for a quiet walk on the beach, but got as far as the house next door when I was stopped by what I thought was a random beach walker. Only when in France have I run into complete strangers only to find out they were somehow related to me. In this case it was one of the grandchildren of my grandfather’s uncle (I think). She said we were cousins and asked who I was related to. So I told her who my grandfather was and she said “I have a baby grandson with the same name! Come see!” The baby was the son of her daughter Becky. 

What follows can only be a result of my having gotten cocky in thinking I was understanding French better than I really was because I honestly thought they invited me to join them for water skiing. Obviously I didn’t want to go but I didn’t know how to politely say in French “I wouldn’t get on another boat if you paid me” and they thought they were being nice by asking Susan for me if I could go. (She replied I was 22 and could do what I wanted-oh I think not my friend, if that were true I would still be walking on the beach alone). I was less than thrilled with the thought of water skiing when I don’t even know how to swim.

Well the kicker is that it wasn’t a so much a boat trip as a night club trip… right, not quite the same thing. I found out my mistake at lunch. I’d told Kathy about how I’d been tricked into water skiing and I didn’t know how to get out of it. But when she announced it at lunch Susan responded with “What? She’s not water skiing, she’s going to a night club.”  I’m still not sure how that mix up happened in my head. In my defense the word for night club is literally “box” so maybe I just didn’t put it together. Becky was excited because it was her first time going out after having her baby (the baby was only 2 months old). She reassured me that she wasn’t going to drink so she would drive home. They asked me if we do that in the U.S. too, have designated drivers, when I said yes they said “oh you have police checking all the time too?” like that’s the only reason to have a designated driver… As it turned out most of the kids in the night club were 17 or younger and since you can’t drive until 18 in France I’m not sure how the 14 year olds got there. The club was decent, but I’ll tell ya-a cigarette to the cheek is more painful than you would think and after that I saw everyone with a cigarette (aka everyone in the club) as a potential attacker. That’s the only sure fire (no pun intended) way I know to get me to stop flailing my arms around when dancing…After a clump of glow-stick-filled-straws too my left eye I decided it was time to leave. And after 2 and half hours of sleep it was time to get up and make the trip to the wedding…

 

*all names have been changed