A Coppertone Moment
Sight, for most people, is a given. It is how we perceive and, therefore, learn most of what we will ever know. In comparison, the other senses are far behind, with hearing playing a distant second fiddle. Way behind these two, for what we gather in about the world around us, are the other three senses, touch (unless you read Braille), taste (unless you are a chef) and, last, the sense of smell.
Besides learning new things through them, all of the senses have an extraordinary capacity to bring back a moment, an incident, or an event from the past. Some come through well, and for a fortunate few, astonishingly clearly, depending upon how you personally perceive and whether you have the ability to make good use of the lower-tier senses.
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I am waiting to pick up my eighth-grade daughter from middle school, but there are a few minutes to spare. I enter the neighborhood drugstore, not shopping for anything in particular. I walk down the aisle and pass the vitamin pills, the detergent, and the shampoo. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse a display of suntan lotion. There are several brands and I scan them, readily finding the broad, copper-colored one that is so familiar.
My step slows and I pause. Is this a good time for a visit? Oh, what the heck?
I reach for the bottle and grasp it with one hand, unscrewing the cap with the other. I hesitate for just a second and then lift it to my face. I close my eyes and inhale, filling my nostrils with a fragrance I have smelled a thousand times before, maybe more…and then…I am gone.
I am transported to another place, another time…and I am rejuvenated. In less than an instant I am walking on the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey. Moist sand squishes between my toes and I hear, in the background, the rippling and cobbling of the ebbing surf soothing and quenching a multitude of clamshells. There is music in the air, guitars and bongos, and a hootenanny taking place off to my right not far from the shadows of the boardwalk above. A girl with long, dark hair in a crimson bikini is dancing, as much for herself as for the throngs around her, and she moves with the rhythm in a haunting way. She closes her eyes and, for her, the crowd disappears. She is in her own world…I know how she feels.
Up the beach is a lifeguard stand with white wooden slats and a tall bronze man sporting the canvas navy blue Ocean City Beach Patrol swimsuit with the double-ring, silver belt buckle. A dozen stores on the boardwalk carry these suits so anyone, in a small way, can be in the OCBP…just like one of “them.”
Lovely young ladies in stunning white swimsuits, contrasting in a sensuous way with their tans, play with a beach ball in view of the guard stand. Their blond tassels swoosh back and forth as they dart this way and that, their laughter pealing through the air.
The music begins to fade, then the laughter, and a long stretch of sand ahead summons me. Thirty yards off shore is a sandbar. I prance over to it, splashing along the way. It allows one to stand as though balanced precariously atop the water, hardly breaking the surface. Observers in the distance must wonder how it can be. Then in a rush, it is time for the teenager, me, to do a handstand, right out here on the ocean. I feel my muscles stretching, back arched, my toes reaching for the sky. A moment later I am down and sprinting along the sandbar, then dipping into a round-off and springing high, exploding into a towering back summersault. I windmill through the air as though tossed by a surreal slow-motion catapult, and the world finally comes back right-side up, my feet gingerly replanting on the solid surface of the ocean.
There is a slight hitch in time to catch my breath and then an eyes-closed moment when I raise my face to the penetrating rays and the life-giving warmth of the sun. The wind tousles my hair and I feel my skin tighten where the salt water evaporates. I inhale deeply, taking in all that is around me. It feels good; it feels wonderful. It is a moment that I wish I could always feel, or at least be able to recall. Little do I know at the time….
I exhale slowly…slowly…slowly…. The music and the laughter and the dancing girl are gone. The lifeguard and his white-suited bevy of admiring beauties have dissipated, and even the sound of the soothing surf finally fades away.
I open my eyes and look at the container of Coppertone. I recap it and return it to its place on the shelf, smiling an easy smile. The genie is safely back in the bottle, but only asleep, and always awaiting my next return. So much for the lower-tier sense of smell.
North Miami Beach
May 19, 2004