coquetterie

Coconuts evoke memories of summer.

I grew up in the Northeast and in Florida. Our summer [family] vacation commenced the last two weeks in August as an end of summer rush. We spent two blissful weeks at Ocean City, Maryland every year, before moving to Florida.

My mind flips to the file folders of pictures and memories from these halcyon days. We rose early, Mom and Dad getting my sister and I ready for a day spent on the beach. Mom sorting breakfast and packing our lunches, whilst Dad herded us out of the kitchen for one last bathroom break before ushering us out the door. Mom always joined us later after tidying up the rental flat and putting our lunches together.

I ate, always, peanut butter and jelly, orange or grape soda and chips of some sort. Funny, isn’t it, how I can’t remember what anyone else had? Once Dad managed to get us out of the flat, we picked up our assorted items that we carried with us. My sister, the baby, hauled her buckets and spades, packed and stacked with an engineer’s precision. My father hauled the beach blanket on his shoulder, with the umbrella resting on it, a tight grip on my sister’s hand and two beach chairs in his other hand. By the time these trips ended, I just had to hang onto the chairs as I hauled two more chairs and other assorted paraphenalia.

We arrived with the life guards in the morning and left with them in the evenings. We staked out our claim on the beach, close to the shoreline. We also reserved spots for our downstairs neighbors and landlord. Every year it was the same people staying with us. Heavenly.

With the setup of our beach plot completed, Dad liberally applied the sunblock. Not just any sunscreen served, though. My sister and I epitomized Coppertone kids. The doe-eyed, brunette, I turned a lovely chesnut colour. My sister, the blue-eyed blonde burned. Funny, at puberty, our body chemistry morphed turning my sister into the chesnut and me the tomato.

Of all of this, what stands out most, the scent of summer. It mixes Coppertone with sand and salty-sea. If I close my eyes, I hear the squeals of the seagulls and the whistle of the life guards. Coppertone, somehow always links with coconuts for me. Even though, I don’t think that was the base scent.

What brings all of this crystally back to me, I discovered a new bath scent: Exotic Coconut from Bed Bath and Bodyworks. With base notes of sandalwood and musk, normally, I would run from it. You see, those two scents generally trigger and allergy attack.

This time, the scents seem diffused and weakened, not nearly as overpowering as on their own. It reminds me of hot days on the beach, splashing in the surf and my youth. It also serves to remind me of hot nights laying between crisp cotton sheets, feeling the water rush over me again and again. Finally, the coconut scent brings all the memories together.

Thanks to the addition of the musk and sandalwood, this coconut summer scent adds a new dimention: Passion. In the shower as I wash or when I spritz myself with the body spray, the deep, warm scent presses me to think of hot passionate nights. Clutching at another body, hot and warm, my sensory memory has come full circle.

Shwayze: Corona and Lime: Corona and Lime - Single [3:55]

Technorati Tags: summer vacation, summer sensations, heat, coconut, coppertone, beach, vacation, Schwayze, Corona and Lime

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Memorial Day falls on a Sunday this year.

For work-related purposes, we celebrate it on the preceeding Monday. Thus, it is Memorial Day weekend. For most professionals, it is a three-day weekend; as the British would say, it’s a bank holiday weekend.

It heralds the unofficial start of summer.

The weekend will be spent arguing with family, wrinkling my nose at hors d’oevres that I do not like at the family BBQ and avoiding the sun. I broil in the sun.

A few summer’s ago, I decided I wanted a bit of a tan. Whilst everyone worked, I snuck over to the ‘rents, and I borrowed their pool and loungers. I stretched out on a towel wearing a skimpy swimsuit. I unfasted the top, removed it and succeeded in soaking up the sun.

What did I not count on?

Oh, yes…I fell asleep. In the middle of the day, in the subtropics in late May.

I wanted some natural highlights in my hair, so I spread my hair out around me, put on my shades and closed my eyes to the glaringly bright sunlight. The trees whispered with the breeze. I heard bees buzzing and other natural sounds I did not recognize. I thought a short amount of time elapsed.

I. WAS. WRONG.

I looked at my skin, which through the darkened lenses of my sunglasses had a pink-ish cast. I pushed myself up…and nearly died. My skin was sore and tight. A foreshadowing of things to come. I wrapped a towel around myself, picked up my accoutrements and walked into the house.

My mother greeted me from the kitchen. After expressing shock because she was home early, she casually mentioned that she thought I was looking dreadfully red and thought perhaps she should get me out of the sun.

Pushing my sunglasses up onto my head, acting as an expensive hairband, I gaped at myself in the mirror. RED. The pinkish cast was a dream. I was as red as a lobster. Because I apparently drifted on a light layer of sleep, thinking little time had passed, I didn’t turn.

I only managed to cook half of myself. In the ensuing hours, the pain and tightness set in. If I could have, I would have stretched out, face down in a cooling bath of aloe. Needless to say, there was no blue, save for my pain-tinged sadness that Memorial Day weekend.

Please have a safe and lovely holiday weekend. And, remember your sunblock!

The Donnas: Take It Off: [2:40]

Technorati Tags: life, sunburn, summer, Memorial Day, Weekend

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