7 p.m. in L'Escala
7 p.m. in L’Escala is the exact right time for a pre-dinner vermut, a bowl of Marcona almonds, and a seat that faces the Gulf of Roses. It is July, and the sun hangs high and hot. After a month of sharing a flat with two of my best girlfriends and their young sons, I am alone. In the fresh quiet, everything slows, and I look out over Port d’en Perris from my spot on the balcony, watching teens and pre-teens lounge and climb across the promontory. Below this long stretch of blonde and jagged stone, the sea is slick crystal, almost waveless. Clear and cold. The younger kids wear neon water shoes and jump cannonball-style between the rocks into water I didn’t realize was cannonball-deep.
The older kids slouch-walk across the jagged outcroppings and then settle in next to each other. A slim bronzed arm stretches around a shoulder. Salt-dried hair is tucked behind peachy ears. A cheek reaches out to receive a kiss. A head rests on an outstretched back. Red bikini, dusty orange swim trunks. Sorbet-striped towels wrinkling along the slopes and cracks of the rocks.
I wonder why they choose this place to sun themselves, against all these wildly unforgiving angles, when Cala de la Creu’s flat concrete slabs and smooth slanted boat slips are so close. Here, with less room to spread out, little groups tuck tight between sandy spires. Then I understand: Here, it is impossible to be apart from each other. Here, their closeness is inevitable.
A topless twenty-something gingerly steps away from the pebbled shore while eating a strawberry, her skin bright white except for a red splash of sunburn across her nose and cheeks. At that age, I would’ve found her image jarring, would’ve rendered some kind of judgment—maybe finding a fetching freshness in the contrasting colors or something ugly in the vulnerability of flesh. I may have been embarrassed by the exposure of it all, the rawness. Now I only feel immense tenderness.
They are all other people’s children. Kids I don’t know and will never know. And still how keenly I want the world to be gentle with them, to unfold for them, to be careful and kind and bright with love. I hope their parents stay as they are tonight, hanging back just enough to let them explore the shore on their own. Present but not pressing. Close but not claustrophobic. And I wish, for all of us, later years like the ones I can see spread out beyond the rocks, scattered across the town’s small plaza. The greyed grandpas that clink glasses in the shade. The cluster of stoop-shouldered seniors that move slow and steady, arms laced together for balance, leaning against each other, laughing. Suspended together in this hot salt air and this sky shifting finally toward lavender, I don’t feel alone at all.
A toddler shrieks high and joyful from Passeig de la Platja. She tumbles toward someone beloved. Tomorrow, I’ll roam around those rocks, early, when only the oldies are out, having staked their spots on the nearby sand. I’ll wade out as gentle as the strawberry girl. I’ll climb like a kid to that spot where the shore drops steep, and I’ll jump in, feet first.
About the Author
Jen Backman is an English professor at Palomar College. For work, she writes about Thomas Pynchon. For fun, she writes about rock stars and traveling to magical places. She thinks Thoreau was really onto something when he said, “I love the wild not less than the good.”
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha.
