Lifeguard Chair / Memories - Good or Bad?

Lifeguard Chair

A red lifeguard chair stands out against the sand on an overcast day at Cocoa Beach, Florida. These chairs had been painted since our last visit when they were all just unpainted wood. The red color here was really eye-catching, as you can see.

On one day that we were there, once the lifeguard arrived, he dug all around in the sand for quite a while to get his chair reclining at just the right angle. I suppose if you are going to sit in one of those wooden chairs all day, having it at just the right angle will help. Of course, the beach girl that stood by the chair and talked to him most of the day probably didn’t hurt, either.

Photo location: Lori Wilson Park, Cocoa Beach, Florida
A three-exposure (-2, 0, +2) HDR tonemapped in Photomatix, edited in GIMP

Memories – Good or Bad?

Sometimes I wonder if I am just making things hard on myself by posting these beach pictures. Maybe it is just too much.

If you have seen many of the posts here at all, I’m sure you can tell that I love the beach. It’s one of my favorite places to be. And if you know much about me, you know that we don’t live anywhere near the beach. At all. The closest beach would be about an 8 hour drive from here. But we really like Cocoa Beach, which is around 15 hours away. Of course, you can get there more quickly by flying, but that also costs a lot more, too.

Needless to say, we don’t get to the beach all that often. Maybe once a year, if that much. And then we remember just how much we like it there. And I take lots of pictures. And then I come home and post them here.

These pictures bring back memories that are at times bittersweet. Actually, the memories are quite good, because we had lots of fun. So that’s the sweet part. The bitter part is that sometimes those good memories make real life seem just a bit ordinary. Almost too ordinary at times. I know that if I stop and think about it, our ordinary life is really quite good. Just different from our time at the beach. 

So maybe if I really think about it, I know that it isn’t a bad thing to see these pictures and remember our good times at the beach. But rather, it is a good thing that we got to go at all. Instead of wishing I were there, I should be glad for the memories.

The other day, I saw a picture of myself when I was six years old and had broken my arm. That brought back memories, too. Memories I would like to remember a lot less than the memories of our good times at the beach. 

So with that, I think I will just stick to pictures of the beach and the memories of the good times (and no broken bones) there. Yes, that will do just fine.

Words from the Bible

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. – 1 John 1:5-7