Parents at the beach

There is another group of people, albeit smaller, that I have been “sightseeing” in Barbados. The young couples at the beach, young in that the children are merely babies, toddlers, or preschoolers.

Dad with his graying chest hair and the beginning of a gut over what used to be washboard abs; Mom with her stretch marks and hints of facial wrinkles exclaiming “oohs” and “aahs” while fetching and pouring sea water on a mound of sand trying to engage Baby who is only interested in his own toes.

These adults were probably in stiff suits just the other day giving (or taking) orders and now here they are…I wonder if they are having fun. It all looks so mundane.

Again my thoughts drift off to my parents and I recall a story I heard in the past year. It was years ago when they were hip young parents,with me their eldest just a toddler. They were at the beach on the Atlantic coast of Angola with another young family. In the midst of the merry-making the fathers get up to “go somewhere”, the two toddlers continue to play in their boat/dingy thingy, and the mothers continue to laugh and converse.

Next thing you know a passerby begins to shout in Portuguese something about babies at sea. Yes, my playmate and I had been whisked away by the waves, (did we take ourselves down there first?, who knows) and were totally oblivious that we were soon to become shark fodder!

What absent-minded parenting.Tee-hee!