The beach may be fake but the appeal is genuine

The kids are getting a big kick out of reminding me that I said a few months ago we’d probably forego our annual summer membership at NARA Beach this year. NARA Beach is a large man-made pond in the town next to ours, just a ten-minute drive away, featuring mounds of soft fluffy sand, vigilant lifeguards and a playground. We started buying a summer membership there five years ago and have every year since, but when the topic came up back in April, I said probably not this year.

I just thought the kids were getting too old for it. With its very shallow water – you have to walk way out to get more than four feet deep, and the biggest part of the swimming area is only one or two feet deep and usually populated by toddlers playing with trucks or pails – and adjoining playground, it’s generally more popular with little kids. Even last year, at 10, Tim often appeared to be the oldest child on the premises. This year I figured my kids would want to join one of the pool clubs their friends belong to.

But they disagreed with me, so back we went to NARA Beach. And back again and again. It’s not even mid-July and we’ve already been around a dozen times this summer. The kids were right; you don’t outgrow a good day at the beach, even if the beach is imported sand overlooking a shallow swimming hole dug into a former quarry.

I knew already that no one outgrows the real beach, of course. My college roommate lives on a beach in Maine, and she entertains dozens of families during the summers. “I have never yet met a kid who did not like to play at the beach,” she once said to me, and in saying that she was echoing the words of one of my favorite parenting columnists, Barbara Meltz, formerly of the Boston Globe, who said beach play is good for absolutely every age group and every developmental level.

But NARA Pond is no Atlantic Ocean. By definition, it lacks the awesome splendors of a real beach: no surf, no tide, no tidal pools, no shells to collect, no lapping waves. No direct view to Ireland somewhere over the distant horizon. Just warm shallow water.

Yet as Tim and Holly proved over the course of three hours yesterday afternoon, the appeal of sand and water is limitless in scope, unbound by the age of the participant or even the magnitude of the body of water. They don’t care that this is no ocean or that they have to make a significant effort merely to swim deep enough that their feet won’t touch the bottom. They were too busy playing together to care.

They played catch with a soggy fabric ball they keep in the beach bag. They played “bridges,” swimming between each other’s legs. Tim taught Holly to do handstands. Holly practiced swimming close to the bottom, with Tim’s encouragement. They spotted small fish in the clear shallows. They held water-walking races and swimming races.

That’s another thing my college roommate has observed over a decade of countless guests at the beach: kids play together when they’re in the water. No one is too small or too slow. They always find ways to share the experience.

My kids certainly did yesterday, and they always do when we’re at NARA. Unlike at home, they never argue there, or want to do different things. They swim together. They play together. And they were right: there was no reason at all to think they wouldn’t enjoy it just as much this year as any other.

So we’ll probably spend a lot of time this summer on the sandy beach by the pond. It’s not the seashore, but I can’t imagine that the kids would have more fun if it were. They swim for hours, and when they need a rest they play on the sand. Just like the much younger kids more typical of NARA’s clientele. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a great way to spend our summer days, this year just as in so many past years.