There is nothing relaxing about Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.”
That’s a song people use to burst through the French doors of some country club banquet hall as husband and wife for the first time. He gives her a rehearsed twirl, dip, and kiss for the videographer while old frat brothers and distant cousins clap along.
You don’t blast “Crazy in Love” to hang listlessly at the beach. But that’s what the family next to us did yesterday.
No vibes. No turn up. Just “uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no no.” Three teenage girls scrolled their phones as they switched from back to stomach to back again. Their parents ate some chips. No one spoke.
I thought to myself: am I about to put headphones on and play “ocean sounds” in front of the ocean? Have I finally reached the age where “Crazy in Love” requires a time and place to be tolerable?
We packed up our matching Tommy Bahama backpack beach chairs, the tub of party mix I bought that morning at CVS, our insulated mugs with handles (his, a Stanley; mine, an Amazon knock-off), six Stateside canned vodka sodas, my Crocs, his Birkenstocks, and down the beach we went, where I could be 31 & 364 days in peace.
So I guess that makes me 32 today, huh?
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I chose to spend my birthday in the least exotic place possible: Delaware. Specifically, Rehoboth Beach. There’s something about the Delaware and Maryland beaches that always welcomes me home. West coast looseness meets southern grit in these funky brewery ass towns. Every 13-year-old girl in jean shorts and a bikini top reminds me to play in the rain, to braid my hair. There’s Old Bay on every table.
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Last night, I decided I wanted crab legs. That’s the meal I associate with a true beach vacation. I want messy. I want oceanic. I want to grip my beer bottle with butter fingers and slop it all down in some string-lit shack of a restaurant. So that’s what we did. No words exchanged, just shells cracking and sporadic “MMMM”s from me because if there’s one thing I know about myself at 32, it’s that everything delicious gets enjoyed out loud.
After dinner, we sat outside a candy store with a giant Peppa Pig out front. I couldn’t believe the crowds of people, young and old, flocking to get photos with this thing. I was having a moment, ya know. Birthday bluesing. Public displays of moodiness. You feel the high of working for those long sticks of crab meat and it ends so quickly and that’s sort of how life works, too. So we went for ice cream. I got strawberry.
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Crab legs, ice cream, sunburn, surf shops with walls of Roxy and Hurley, boogie boards, salt water taffy, boardwalk arcades and mini golf, Life Is Good t-shirts with some stick figure on a boat, whistling lifeguards, shells scraping your feet. You want to stay young forever but the clock has one job, and that is to keep moving.
I’ve been waiting for birthdays to feel celebratory again. To have that champagne fizz of joyous uncertainty toward the year ahead. But the certainty of life without my sister and my best friend feels a lot like throwing a party that no one shows up to. It feels pointless to make wishes anymore.
I pull up a video of Peppa Pig to try and understand the hype. I’m so overwhelmed by the sweetness I can’t tell whether to laugh or cry. Whatever it stirred in me reminded me I have one job: to keep moving.
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Today is my 32nd birthday. Today 99% of people on earth will get sunlight at the same moment.
In eight months, my new last name will mean “wolf.” I think I’ll howl at the sun just to shake things up.
“You want to stay young forever but the clock has one job, and that is to keep moving.”
Thankful we crossed internet paths this year. Keep moving. I’m to keep cheering you on.
Happy birthday!
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“I have one job: to keep moving.”
Amen to that.