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The first time I went to the beach I was nine years old and last year, coincidentally 9 years later, the person who organized this whole trip passed away tragically, which brought me several memories. In Brazil, not everyone has some money for travel and with my family it was the same. Until the economic boost in the early 2000s, the country's exit from the hunger map, the unemployment rate down, the emergence of a new middle class full of dreams and joys. I went to the beach. In a small car, full of cousins and uncles and aunts and expectations. A house was rented in a small fishing village some 80 miles away from the city where we lived. I remember being awakened early to the sound of empty wheelbarrows pushed by skinny, skin-battered men on the dirt and gravel street before the sun even came up. I remember the villagers looking at us strangely when we arrived: “people from the city”. Next to the rented house there was an environmental reserve area and at night mosquitoes and bugs invaded our rooms in search of our salty blood. Nobody could sleep. The heat of the salt air in the summer was unbearable. The bunk moaned and threatened to fall whenever I made the slightest movement. But we woke up with energy every day on that trip. We walked two streets until reaching the sea, loaded with bags, in turn, loaded with peanuts, chocolate chip cookies and water bottles that were already hot when we reached the white sand. I competed with the ocean on that trip. Tireless me, tireless him. It only beat me when I saw a popsicle seller coming in the distance. How many lemon popsicles, but which was really just ice, I tasted in those days that seemed to have no end I will never know. Around 1 pm, the drive home was hurried and hopeful that I would be able to get to the only shower first of all. I never did. But I waited sitting on the plastic chairs on the hot, humid porch, looking in the door, watching my aunts dance in the tile kitchen, a practiced ballet of slicing tomatoes and squeezing oranges and stirring the bean pot. I remember the rewarding taste, even without any merit, which was sitting on the floor, since there were only 3 chairs on the table, with the plate resting on the knees and being able to eat and see everyone eating and talking and the mothers already saying to the younger ones: “After lunch you will sleep for a while” and rejoice because i was at an age when i didn't need to sleep anymore and could keep my eyes wide open. At the end of the afternoon, I began to duel with the sea again, but these times we both offered peace to each other in dazzling orange sunsets like an expressionist painting. I would withdraw and let the water and the sky and the fire merge into something beautiful. Some nights we escaped the house as hot as boiling water and went to a small square in the center of the village. It was almost like a competition of things and moments of genuine and unpretentious and childlike happiness and of course I only knew that in a very distant time from that place. The boys always carried a soccer ball and sensitized by the waves, they allowed the girls to play too. In the end, we were presented with hot dogs from dried breads and smiles smeared with ketchup and contentment and delight. Almost every night before going to sleep, the elders would sit on the sidewalk, and laughed remembering days when there were no children and the youth waved. Then they would always get up and kiss us on the top of the head as if explaining that we had nothing to do with the end of those days, but time. I don't remember how the trip ended. Maybe because it never really ended for me. Perhaps a part of me will always remain in that green and stubborn sea, being a girl with broken nails, few words, many eyes.