We consumed books and watermelon.
Twenty years ago I started going to Best Friend’s Beach House with her on the weekends, and invariably we’d spend at least one week of vacation down there during the summers. There was blessedly nothing to do except listen to the surf, turn over when we got too red and read. No phone, no distractions, no A/C. To me, that small place in Matagorda was -and still is- Paradise.
You know how therapists will tell you to “go to your happy place”? The Beach House is the place I go to in my mind when I need to get away, calm down or just remember good times.

Every year during summer vacation I chose Bel Kaufman’s Up The Down Staircase from the in-house cache of books. Can’t really tell you why it caught my interest, except that a young inner city school teacher was about as far from my life as I could possibly get. Escapism at its finest. Never saw the movie, and didn’t want to; every character had been etched perfectly in my mind and would not be shaken by any Hollywood adaptation.

‘Paradise’, from the Scrapbook. ~~>

Things and people change; eventually we went to Matagorda less and less. BF’s parents moved in and started its renovation. But I’d taken the book one year to finish at home, and neither it nor I ever went back. The house was sold and a piece of me fell away. But I re-read this bittersweet, stolen, little novel every year, and brush Texas sand metaphorically out of the crack of my ass.

I just finished it, and am missing my Best Friend very, very much.