The boat I was in bumped gently into the one in front of it. I hopped out into the water. It was only up to my waist. I helped untie the other boats and pull them up onto the beach. When the Banini turned the boats over I had to watch out for my feet as the edge of the hull crunched down into the sand. The year before I had not been fast enough and almost broke my foot under the hard varnished oak rim of the rowboat. Dad had said that to not be careful was irresponsible. I had risked spoiling everyone’s vacation. If my foot had been broken, we would have all had to go back to Switzerland since Italian medicine was no good. He also said that I should be careful of these Italians. “They don’t have the same sense of responsibility as we do,” he said.

The Banini had been very sorry about the accident. As my foot swelled up, he had carried me up to the pensione and apologized profusely to my mother. Fortunately, she had the foresight to come equipped. She put a cool witch hazel pack on my foot, and in seconds it stopped swelling. She had also prayed that the Lord would “reach out and touch Calvin’s foot with His healing hand.” And He did, so the vacation wasn’t spoiled. Not by me, anyway.

The sun was getting hot now. Because this was our first day at the beach, Mom wanted me to wear a T-shirt from 10 A.M. until 3 P.M., the hottest part of the day, so I wouldn’t burn and spoil the vacation.

That night she laid cold towels on my sunburned back. She said she didn’t think it would blister too badly. She wanted to know why I did this every year. Dad said he felt sorry for me, but that since I had not listened to Mom, what did I expect? After it peeled it stopped being sore.

Janet was the first of the family down to the beach that day. She got to sit in our deck chair until Mom arrived. She had just started shaving her legs that spring. For some reason she got angry with me when I asked her about it. I had found her razor in the soap dish at home after she had her bath. I had asked her why there was a razor in the soap dish since Mom had not had a bath that day and Dad kept his razor in his toilet bag in the cupboard; Janet had snatched the razor away from me.

“Don’t you know what the word ‘private’ means?” she’d asked. She had stalked down the hall and slammed the door to her room.