It took me years to know that going to the beach had any­thing to do with being close to the water. 

My par­ents only ever went to the beach when the heat became so oppres­sive that that stay­ing in the small, three-room cot­tage we some­times shared with anoth­er fam­i­ly became impossible.

My father worked dou­ble shifts in a fac­to­ry and we usu­al­ly set off for the beach when he came home, in the late after­noon or ear­ly evening. My moth­er always packed for our out­ings to the beach. She packed food. Usu­al­ly peeled cucum­bers, hard-boiled eggs, cream cheese, a loaf of rye bread and oranges, with the peel already scored in quar­ters and, if we were lucky, some dark red cher­ries. She also packed two blan­kets and two bot­tles filled with tap water. I would feel gid­dy with excite­ment when I saw my moth­er start pack­ing for the beach.

Going to the beach was a whole adven­ture. It start­ed with a walk to the tram stop and a forty-five minute tram ride from the work­ing class, inner-city sub­urb of Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, where we lived. We board­ed the tram armed with our blan­kets and food and drink.

I loved being on the tram. It was so pre­dictable. You sat down, the con­duc­tor came around, you paid your fare and he hand­ed you a bright­ly-col­ored tick­et in return. It was all so nor­mal. And so much of our life was any­thing but nor­mal. Sev­en years ear­li­er, both of my par­ents were still impris­oned in Nazi death camps. Death camps where almost every­one they loved had been murdered.

When we arrived at the beach my moth­er set us up in the treed, scrub­by area that pre­ced­ed the water. We real­ly need­ed the blan­kets as the ground was rough and lit­tered with twigs and bro­ken branch­es. There were always oth­er peo­ple with blan­kets and food already there. They were most­ly Jews. The Ital­ians and Mal­tese and Greeks and oth­er migrants, who were also part of the large post-World War Two migra­tion to Aus­tralia, must have had a dif­fer­ent meet­ing place.

I felt hap­py as soon as I sat down on the blan­ket. I loved being sur­round­ed by fam­i­lies. To me, it always felt like a par­ty. It took away some of the lone­li­ness of grow­ing up with dead grand­par­ents, dead aunts, and dead uncles. It took away the lone­li­ness of grow­ing up with cousins who would nev­er be born.

I sat on my blan­ket eat­ing hard boiled eggs and lis­ten­ing to the adults talk­ing. I know there were oth­er chil­dren sit­ting on oth­er blan­kets. Oth­er chil­dren who were almost all chil­dren of sur­vivors of death camps or labor camps. But I have no mem­o­ry of myself or any of the oth­er chil­dren run­ning around. We were, on the whole, qui­et and pale. A pal­lor hung over us. The pal­lor of liv­ing too close to death.

Some­times, a man, who sold bags of unshelled peanuts from a box which hung from a band around his neck, came around. If I was very lucky, my father would buy me a bag of peanuts. And if I was luck­i­er than lucky, an ice-cream ven­dor, with small car­tons of ice-cream sit­ting on top of a mound of ice, would turn up and my father would, despite my mother’s protests, buy me an ice-cream.

I was in heav­en. I was so hap­py. Even my moth­er, whose anguish clung to her like a tight gown, looked more at ease sit­ting on her blan­ket and feel­ing the breeze.

Years lat­er, I real­ized how close we were to the water. And, what a lot of water there was. We were at the sea­side. There was water every­where. Some­how, it didn’t feel strange that it hadn’t occurred to any one of us to go into the water or even think about swim­ming. We were there, on our blan­kets, under the trees in the mid­dle of the dry scrub. We were there for the relief from the heat and for a small respite from the fear.

Lily Brett has writ­ten six nov­els, three col­lec­tions of essays, and sev­en vol­umes of poet­ry. Her work fre­quent­ly explores the lives of Holo­caust sur­vivors and their chil­dren, the expe­ri­ences of mod­ern women, women’s rela­tion­ship with food, and life in New York City. Her most recent book, Lola Ben­sky: A Nov­el (Coun­ter­point), is now available.