Bodies

Swimming has brought my thoughts back to bodies and the beach. My Grandmother Sophie took me to Brighton Beach when I was five and she bought me a huge thin flat potato knish from the knish man. He was walking the beach shouting "Hot knishes, Get your hot knishes here." He had a tattered shoulder strap attached to a banged up insulated metal box that held warm knishes wrapped in large pieces of waxed paper. It was summer. I remember when we approached the water I noticed all the bodies; especially the old men and old ladies. Everyone was swimming or standing in the water. Some old ladies were wearing black dresses in the water. It was my first exposure to the urban ocean of Brooklyn's Bombay. Grandma would always carry a Tupperware quart bottle of water in her beach bag and after our swim she'd have us sit on the boardwalk bench while she rinsed the sand off of our feet before we returned to her apartment. We weren't allowed to go inside the regular front lobby entrance when we were in our bathing suits. We went behind the building down the cool back alley to the gray basement laundry room to catch the elevator.