Between congressional hearings and Supreme Court eruptions, this was one terrible week for calm reflection. And yet this is exactly the time we need it the most.

When you’re so angry that you want to storm off in a million different directions at once, perhaps the best thing is to go nowhere at all. Recharge the batteries, sort out what to do first. Just sit down—preferably dangling your feet off a dock somewhere—and zone out.

I recall a song about this:

“When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space…”

For Carole King, Gerry Goffin and The Drifters, “Up on the Roof” was the place to go.

But that’s not the best place for dangling your feet. For me, summer R & R is inextricably linked with sounds of water.

It might be a sprinkler hissing in the back yard, with children whooping and running through it or it might be the rhythmic “chick-chick-chick” of the automated sprinkler that I always think is a cricket.

The beach is a wonderful place for relaxing, now that I don’t have small children to monitor anymore. The sound of waves crashing on the beach is so relaxing that any number of apps during the pandemic offered me a pale imitation. Unluckily for their wallets, however (and happily for mine), I was never tempted; somehow the artificial sound of ocean waves just makes me even more nervous than I am to begin with.

I need to bring my towel and my sunscreen to someplace in the sun and listen to the real thing. I don’t even need to go into the water to reap the benefits.

Second best, in my book, is the splashing and joyful shouting that makes perfect background noise while reading a trashy paperback at my community pool. Every summer, I forget how much I hate the inconvenience of damp towels and bathing suits, just to get out near some water again.

I wish somebody would make a perfume that smells like sea breeze and suntan lotion. Throw in a Nathan’s hotdog and I’d buy a lifetime supply, just to crack it open and breathe it in the next time the news comes on.

“The Supreme Court today, in a stunning decision…”
“Quick, where’s my Ocean Lotion?” I finally understand the point of smelling salts; I can’t listen to the news these days without something like them.

Where was I? Ah yes … summer. Another one of my favorite sounds is the gentle, almost apologetic lapping of a lake’s tiny waves on a floating dock or the side of a boat. Every now and then a motorized vessel goes by, and you get the more energetic slosh and slap of the wake as it arrives. But soon the motor is off in the distance and things are quiet again—so quiet you can hear the little “swish plonk” of a fish leaping out of the water. They like to do that in front of the folks who failed to catch them all day.

At night sounds carry far on the water. Lately, boom-box cars have been riling up people all around the New York waterfront, but it also serves to remind. You can almost but not quite make out the words— punctuated by laughter and the occasional clink of glassware.

Ah, the sound of a screen door slamming as someone in flip-flops comes into the cabin for another bag of marshmallows. I should join them out by the fireside. Everything I toast ends up in the ashes, but the dancing flames are so tantalizing, and the smell of woodsmoke is one of the best smells on Earth. (The only thing better is when it’s part of a campfire breakfast someone else has started, with bacon sizzling and coffee brewing.)

Someone turns on a TV by accident and a chorus of voices shouts, “Turn that thing off! Don’t you know we’re trying to relax around here?”

I can tell from the wooden clacking that someone wants to play dominos or maybe checkers. Good! That’s all the thinking I can manage, for the next few days.

My wish, for us all, is a peaceful holiday weekend.