A whiter shade of pale

Why do we Irish burn up in the sun?

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We now know that the damaging rays of the sun are inescapable, no matter where they beam down on you. Sunscreen technology wasn’t what it was back then; we didn’t have the benefit of alcohol sprays that dry instantly on your skin.

I vaguely remember occasional slatherings of white lotion that would only work if it was allowed to dry into your skin. That time period would be an eternity for a kid itching to go in the pool, and I usually dove into the water long before the sunblock would take effect.

My folly was rewarded in the evenings with scorched red skin and heat blisters that made my arms and shoulders look like a McDonald’s Braille menu. Mom would apply aloe after the fact, sending me to sleep in the throes of alternating shivers and heat flashes.

“You get the skin you deserve,” a friend of mine said recently. If that is the case, I am entitled to the best.

I now moisturize with a shockingly expensive SPF 30 face lotion and apply a different blocking agent for my scalp. My dermatologist says this 44 year-old face has the skin of a 30-year-old on it, but he wasn’t so kind about my skin’s condition by the time he got to my underwear line during my last visit.  It was there that he gauged away the margins around a few pre-cancerous lesions and stitched the holes left behind.

I sigh and return to my book on the beach, but not before telling my daughter that God never intended the Irish to be tan.

That’s just the way the black and white cookie crumbles.

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