If it weren’t Father’s Day weekend, I have to admit I probably wouldn’t have noticed just how many dads there are, on this hazy strip of Jersey Shore just south of Atlantic City. But isn’t that the way? Fathers may be loved and sometimes feared. They may be of immense importance to us, and cast long shadows across our lives — which sounds ominous, but doesn’t have to be — yet like most other things in life they’re generally part of the backdrop. On one June weekend, though, we make a point of thinking about them, and it’s as though they suddenly come into focus.
A vacation place like this brings out the full panoply of fathers. From where I am standing on the boardwalk, I can see dads of every hue and age, and of every height and, especially, weight.
There are preppy dads, nerdy dads, dads with dreadlocks and dads so covered in tattoos that from a distance they look as though they’re upholstered in chintz.
If Dr. Seuss were here, he’d get a rhyme out it: “Dads with sunburns, dads with beer, dads a’ fishing from the pier. /Dads on mopeds, dads in cars/dads all puffing big cigars!”
Over there sits a nut-brown father tipped back in his beach chair, toasting peaceably in the afternoon sun while two little girls sift sand on to his feet.
Over here, a silver-haired fellow spikes the volleyball in a game with two children and a woman who’s probably his adult daughter. He moves more stiffly than they do, and uses more care on the uneven sand, but he laughs when the boy jumps up at him.
Near the broad surf, a father and son are crouched down, silently building a sand castle. The wind whips their hair. Not a word passes between them but they seem to understand each other. As the father smoothes the floor of the moat, the boy goes off with a bucket for water.
Some dads have tuned everybody out. Lots of them wear ear buds, and nod their heads to tunes no one else can hear. Others are on the phone, one way or another, talking or texting or scrolling around.
“Daddy … Daddy … Daddy …” a boy calls, from a kind of deep watery divot on the beach. The children around him are shrieking and kicking wet sand at each other, but he’s trying to get his father’s attention. Dad seems not to be available at the moment. Dad sits in a semicircle of other adults in beach chairs, and though it’s hard to tell on account of his sunglasses he appears to be asleep.
It’s rather nice to see all these fathers, biffing about with their families. Of course it’s impossible from the outside to see what sort of dads they are, whether they are tender or tough or surly or irritable or generous or loving or hurtful. But they have come to the beach with their children; surely they get points for that.
It’s a classic American seaside scene, with seagulls swooping and lifeguards gazing. And this weekend, appropriately, it’s Dadsville.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
