Everything We Have

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Steph

At Thanksgiving dinner my mom asked everyone to go around the table and say what made us feel thankful. Noah said computers, being at his new school, and “Mommy and Beth.” June’s answer was simpler: “Everything I have,” she said. When Mom pressed her for specifics she said her toys, but I liked her first answer better.

We drove to my mom and stepfather’s house on Thanksgiving so on that day we pretty much traveled and ate and went to bed. Friday was an eventful, or in June’s words “a giant day.” Beth and the kids and I drove out to the Main Line, where we lived when I was in high school, and had lunch at Hymie’s deli (http://www.hymies.com/hymiesMarion.html), an important hangout spot during my eleventh grade year and the establishment where I learned to appreciate cheese fries. It also has a “World Famous Pickle Bar” and given that pickles are one of June’s favorite foods, it seemed like a natural choice. In fact, I wondered why I had never suggested we go before. We didn’t count on the Black Friday lunch crowds, however, and had to wait a half hour for a table in a crowded waiting area. Service was fast after that, though, and from our first course of pickles to the black and white cookies and poppy seed hamantash we picked up for later in the carryout bakery corner, everyone was satisfied. (And yes, I did have cheese fries, with a salad.) As we left the restaurant, I thought I saw snowflakes swirling in the wind, but no one else did.

We came home and June and I napped. (She’d been up during the night and awakened for the day at 5:45 so we were both done in.) While we slept, Mom and Beth and Noah played Monopoly. When I woke June at close to four and carried her half-asleep and scowling downstairs, Mom was nearly bankrupt, Beth was rolling in money and properties, and Noah was somewhere in the middle. They suspended the game so we could leave for the Christmas light show (http://www.wanamakerorgan.com/xmas.php) at the Wannamaker’s building, which now houses a Macy’s. This show is a Philadelphia tradition I find somewhat daunting to describe, but imagine yourself seated on a red carpet in an atrium, craning your neck to look upward at a screen, several stories high, consisting of light bulbs (an enormous Lite-Brite, if you will) with a big lighted Christmas tree and an ornate organ in front of it. As the organ plays Christmas music and Julie Andrews’ recorded voice narrates, the lights come on in different patterns to depict scenes from The Nutcracker, Frosty the Snowman, etc. Noah liked it, but June loved it. She was rapt the whole time, a few times laughing out loud with pleasure. She must be exactly the right age to receive it all with wonder and delight.

From here, we proceeded to the Dickens Christmas village on the third floor of Macy’s (http://philadelphia.about.com/od/photo_galleries/ig/dickens_village/). You walk through a winding passageway lined with little houses and outdoor scenes from A Christmas Carol. The figures were mechanized mannequins of the sort one used to see in department store display windows at Christmastime, about half life-size. The first one stood at a podium reading the opening passage of the novella. On the walls were plaques with more passages, at least one for each scene. Some of the mannequins moved and some spoke. We made our way through the display very slowly because Noah was reading all the text. (His interest made me wonder if we could read this book together sometime next month.) Noah’s slow progress wasn’t much of a problem because June wanted to linger in some rooms. She loved the ghost of Jacob Marley and concluded it was a leftover Halloween decoration. When we encountered the ghost of Christmas Future, however, she exclaimed, “Too scary! Too scary!” and fled the room. A few minutes later, though, she was tugging on my hand, wanting to go back, so we did.

After we’d had our fill of Dickens we went out for a very tasty dinner at a vegetarian Chinese restaurant and got home well past the kids’ bedtime. Beth says I did a very good job pretending not be panicking about how late we were out.

The next morning Mom, Beth and Noah finished their Monopoly game. (As expected, Beth won.) In the afternoon we met up with a friend of mine from high school at the Tyler Arboretum in Media (http://www.tylerarboretum.org/). What I haven’t mentioned up to now is that my twenty-fifth high school reunion was Friday night and I skipped it. I’ve actually never been to any of my high school reunions. In fact, until recently I wasn’t even sure if my high school had them—I have Facebook to thank for learning it does. Now that I knew, it felt strange to know it was happening, so close, and I wasn’t there. High school was not a very good time for me, especially the first two years and a lot of the friends I did make when I was in eleventh grade were seniors so there didn’t seem to be much point in going. Facebook has brought me back in touch with a lot of acquaintances from my class and I have gotten to know a few of them better than I did back in the day, which has been rewarding. Maybe in another five years I’ll be up for mingling with them in person, but this year it just seemed too overwhelming.

I did want to make an effort to reconnect, though, so I contacted two friends from the class ahead of mine, John, who still lives in the area and Pam, who is back for a year. Only John was free. We decided to meet at the arboretum so the kids (his two and our two) could run around while the adults talked. What we didn’t know and what made the place magical was that there was a series of tree houses and child-sized cottages scattered along the path. Many had plaques explaining what kind of creatures lived there (fairies, pixies, wizards, green men, etc.). There was a sand sculpture of an ogre leaning against a castle with pumpkins at his feet, slowly eroding away. There was a meadow maze, its grass brown but still mowed into shape with several huge straw people in the center. I said it looked like something people who were planning on making a sacrifice to the harvest gods might make. There was a door set into a hill with the question “What Lies Beneath?” posted. Visitors were invited to write a story about it and submit it to the arboretum’s web site. Some houses were too small to enter, but the kids clambered up every ladder they saw and explored every kid-sized building. (June got stuck in one particularly tall tree house when she lost her nerve about coming back down the ladder so John went up and carried her down.)

I think what the kids liked best, though, was the amphitheater. There was a dress-up area with a costume bin and pretty soon John’s nine-year-old daughter and Noah and June were putting on a show for the grownups and John’s just turned four-year-old son, who was too shy to perform. June was a fairy who had gotten lost, John’s daughter was a knight and Noah started off as a wizard but suffered an allergic reaction that turned him into an alligator. Attempts to kill the alligator failed so the knight adopted it instead and then they helped the fairy find her way home. It was a cloudy, chilly day and we had the arboretum nearly to ourselves. It was like our own enchanted kingdom.

As we walked through the woods and fields with the kids racing ahead to find out what came next, the four grownups talked. The feeling was friendly and relaxed; conversation felt easy. John was just as I remembered him, except decades older and with a family if that makes sense. We agreed we should get together again. About an hour into the visit, around 4:40, we told the kids we needed to turn around because the gates closed at 5:00 and as we’d been walking in a circuitous path we weren’t sure how far we were from the exit. The two older kids wanted to keep going, because we hadn’t seen everything, but we persuaded them they didn’t want to get locked into the arboretum for the night (it really was quite cold).

As it turned out the gates did shut while we were still in the parking lot but they’re motion-activated from the inside, so we were able to drive out. (When Beth told this story to my mother and stepfather over pizza that night she said she rammed the car through the gate and my mom almost believed her.)

Sunday we drove home, stopping at the Starbucks closest to my mom’s house for the traditional first holiday drinks of the season. I got an eggnog latte; Beth got gingerbread. We listened to The Austere Academy (Series of Unfortunate Events #5) on the way home. I was glad June slept through a good bit of it, as it’s not really age-appropriate.

Today we’re back in our regular routine–Beth went to work; the kids went to school. Beth was unenthused about going back to her office and I can’t blame her, but I’ve been happy today and full of thankfulness for time with my family and an old friend met anew and deli food and low-tech light displays and Charles Dickens and eggnog lattes and the timeless story of everything we have.

Real Gone

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Steph

Slow down, you’re gonna crash,
Baby you’re a-screaming it’s a blast, blast, blast
Look out babe, you’ve got your blinders on
Everybody’s looking for a way to get real gone
Real gone.
Real gone.

From “Real Gone” by Sheryl Crow and John M. Shanks

..such a gone sweet little soul…Oh we talked, we talked…

From On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

Day 1: Saturday

At 11:35 a.m., two Saturdays ago, we pulled out of the driveway with the opening song from the soundtrack of Cars playing; we were aiming to get real gone.

It was an uneventful drive, compared to our last beachward journey, if slow around the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We listened to the middle and end of How to Train Your Dragon, which we began on the way home from the Outer Banks, and the beginning of The Reptile Room (the second book in the Series of Unfortunate Events). We had lunch at Taco Bell and dessert at Dairy Queen and by 4:45 we were pulling into the driveway of our rental house.

My mom and sister arrived about a half hour later and my mom presented the kids with gifts—a book about oceans for Noah and a pair of white sandals with daisies on them for June. These were just the first in a cascade of gifts for the kids from the older generation that eventually included lobster socks for both from Aunt Carole, a shark t-shirt and shark’s tooth necklace for Noah and a pink, flowered dress for June from YaYa.

Mom, Sara and I took June down to the beach while Noah stayed behind to practice riding his bike up and down the block. Beth was hoping to take the training wheels off this week and after some initial reluctance on his part, he’d gotten enthusiastic about the project. But since he rides his scooter everywhere, it’s been months or more likely years since he’s ridden the bike so he wanted to practice a little first with the training wheels raised but still attached.

At the beach, June wanted me to pick her up and carry her “deep into the sea.” We didn’t go as far as she would have liked—she kept urging me further on—but we got deep enough so that the waves came up to my chest and her waist. We stayed in until my arms ached from holding her.

Day 2: Sunday

The thing about vacationing with kids is that you never get quite as gone as you would like. Your everyday life keeps intruding. For instance, the kids woke up at 5:20 and 5:35 respectively on our first morning of vacation. It was a dark, rainy morning, too, perfect for sleeping in, but apparently they didn’t think so. This made the several-hour stretch of time when we’re awake but the rest of the house isn’t even longer and more challenging. At one point Beth issued an ultimatum that if they couldn’t be quiet, there would be no Candy Kitchen that day. Despite repeated warnings, they failed the test. As the kids and I walked away from the house at 8:20, June was trailing me, her arms crossed over her chest and a pout on her face. When I inquired if she was upset about the candy, she just grunted. About a block later, when I glanced back at her, she deigned to speak: “No fair!”

Bur soon June and I were at the beach, absorbed in building a sand head with facial features made of shells and Noah was riding his bike on he boardwalk, with strict instructions to stay on the right, look out for pedestrians and to come back either to the shelter near the footbath or to come find us on the beach. I let a half an hour elapse and we arrived at the shelter just as Noah did. Beth met up with us there at 9:00 a.m. as I was applying sunscreen to the kids. The sun was just coming out from behind heavy cloud cover. June was trying to talk me into letting her make her Candy Kitchen purchase now, even though she wouldn’t be able to eat it until tomorrow. At first I said no, more or less automatically, but after hearing, “It would be a good compromise, Mommy” several times, I started to think maybe it would be. And I thought if the candy was in the house, staring them in the face, it might become a more effective motivator. So we set off down the boardwalk, June and I walking, Beth and Noah riding bikes. We met at the candy store and June selected cherry taffy. Noah decided just to browse until he was eligible to eat his treat.

During June’s nap, Beth and Sara went grocery shopping while Mom took Noah to a coffee shop where he ate coconut cake and beat her at Roundabouts. Later in the afternoon, I took the kids to Funland (http://www.funlandrehoboth.com/). Noah wanted to know if he could have his tickets and go off on his own. I thought about it and said yes, provided he come back to a designated bench after every other ride. Then I took June from ride to ride—the airplanes, the merry-go-round, the mermaid boats, the fire engines, the mini-Ferris wheel and back to the airplanes. I offered to go up in the Ferris wheel with her but she was insistent on going alone. So I stood there and watched her rise into the air, beaming and waving. I could make out Noah on the nearby helicopter ride and I imagined a time when they’ll hit the boardwalk and Funland on their own. It suddenly seemed a lot closer than I had imagined and that made me happy and sad all at once. I am sometimes conflicted about how much of my old freedom I want back. Not that it matters what I want. Either way, my sweet gone little cat and chick will grow up.

After the kids had used up all their tickets we joined Mom and Sara at the beach. Noah jumped around in the waves, proclaiming them “totally awesome fun.” June built a wall of sand and at Noah’s request, I buried him in the sand and gave him a merman’s tail. He kept sitting up to see it and cracking the sand on his chest. It was cool and cloudy and soon the kids were cold so Sara swaddled them in towels. Only June’s head and feet protruded. “We’re the handless people, “ Noah proclaimed. Then he pulled his towel over his head and became a headless person. June was a duck, no, a penguin, no, a duck. She waddled up the beach, chanting, “I’m a duck. I’m a duck. I’m a very big duck!”

We had dinner on the big picnic table out behind the house, a black bean and avocado salad Sara made and a tortellini salad Mom made. After dinner, Noah went off to read Prince Caspian, and June busied herself building a nest from pine needles for a ground-dwelling bird while the grownups chatted. After Beth and I finished the dinner dishes, we showed the kids their new, special morning toys—a Little Mermaid coloring book with a special color-revealing marker and two Little Mermaid magnetic dress-up dolls for June and two invisible ink mystery game books for Noah.

Day 3: Monday

The kids were quieter the next morning, not what I’d call really quiet, but good enough to release their candy. (Beth took Noah to Candy Kitchen later in the day and he got gummy sharks and gummy teeth. “A classic,” he said.) I took the kids to the beach after breakfast. Noah had planned to ride his bike, but he changed his mind at the last minute. He’d had trouble balancing the afternoon before after doing really well in the morning and he didn’t want to try again. In fact, we never got him back on the bike for the rest of the trip.

Once we got down to the beach, the kids started fighting almost immediately. There was a big pile of sand the lifeguards had used to buttress their chair the day before, but because it was 9:00 a.m., an hour before they come on duty, the chair itself wasn’t there. Both kids clambered up on top of the sand pile but almost at once, Noah started to worry they would wreck it and he jumped off and ordered June off, too. She paid him no mind. I told him it was okay, I didn’t think she’d hurt it and even if she did sand structures are by their very nature temporary and he didn’t build it so he didn’t really have any say over it. All these arguments were lost on him. He sat in the sand and cried and screamed at June for five very long minutes while June danced on the mound, taking a little too much pleasure in his distress for my liking. I sat next to him and rubbed his back, trying to soothe him and wondering if I should stop her. Did she need a lesson in compassion more than he needed one in flexibility? In the end, she got bored, hopped off and he recovered his equilibrium. They splashed in the waves, watched dolphins and made dribble castles peaceably until 10:30 when Beth arrived. She had been delayed by a work crisis (her own impediment to getting real gone—it ended up talking up a lot of her time both Monday and Tuesday. After that she stopped checking her work email). She took the kids away and I had almost an hour alone at the beach and enjoyed my first swim of the trip. I had my second one that afternoon because neither of the kids wanted to come down to the beach.

YaYa and Beth’s aunt Carole arrived that afternoon while I was at the beach and our party was complete. Beth and I collaborated on dinner. I made a cold avocado soup and she made tempeh and roasted vegetable sandwiches. Then we celebrated Carole’s seventy-third birthday with cake. June had selected it at the bakery, so it had pink roses on the frosting. Noah and June’s evening argument concerned whether or not she should sing songs from Cars. Noah wanted Sara, YaYa and Carole to watch the movie and he wanted all of it, even the songs, to be a new experience for them. My mom, who watched it in the Outer Banks, offered to take June into another room when she felt like singing. Happily, this solution pleased everyone.

Day 4: Tuesday

By Tuesday morning the kids knew the drill, and even with the added challenge of not waking Sara, who had joined us up in the attic once YaYa and Carole arrived, they stayed pretty quiet.

Sara and I took the kids down to the beach in the mid-morning. She watched them while I went for a swim. When I came out of the water, June wanted to show me a little sand person she’d made. She’d very carefully etched a face into the sand with her finger, shaped sand into hair on top of its head and stuck shells into its sides for arms. Noah splashed a long time in the waves and seemed to be conversing with some other kids, though later he denied it. As we did many times that week, Sara and I discussed her adoption plans. After years of considering it, she’s taking the plunge and starting the process of adopting as a single mom. It’s a strange and happy thought that in a year or two there might be another kid or even two, my kids’ cousins, on our family vacations.

Back at the house, Noah played Crazy Eights with YaYa, warning her ahead of time, “I’m totally strategic. I’m practically a machine.” The 3:1 adult to kid ratio meant he was able to play a lot of games over the course of the week, with both of his grandmothers, his aunt and his great aunt. He was pretty much in heaven. The abundance of adults in the house was a boon for Beth and me, too.

Mom and Sara took the kids back to Funland while I went to the beach. At least once in every beach trip I catch a wave that sweeps me up and drops me down so perfectly I laugh out loud. Also, on each trip, I lose at least one ponytail holder in the ocean. Often these events coincide, and they did this afternoon. The waves were big and fast and close together. I was a fun swim, well worth being thrown down into the sand a few times and losing my second purple ponytail holder of the summer. (I lost the first one in North Carolina.)

It was a windy afternoon and there were two men parasailing farther out in the water. I watched in amazement as the wind in their sails lifted the boards straight off the water, as high as twelve feet up into the air. A crowd had formed along the shore to watch. Back on shore, I also saw a lot of impressive sand castles. I think people were practicing for the Sandcastle Contest on Saturday (http://www.milfordbeacon.com/lifestyle/x84680732/Sandcastle-contest-fun-for-all-ages-at-Rehoboth-Beach). Over the course of the week, we saw ones that looked like a Greek temple, plus an elephant, a fish, a cat and many others on our little stretch of beach.

Coming home I ran into Mom, Sara and the kids on the boardwalk and heard all about their trip to Funland. June had made a friend on the trampoline and played in the ball pit with her and she rode the merry-go-round with no adult standing next to her, at her own insistence. Noah rode the helicopters three times. This is his favorite ride this year because you can control some of the up and down motion yourself. June rode them, too, but was unable to work the navigation bar.

We walked back to the house and ate a delicious dinner of YaYa’s signature baked macaroni and cheese, corn on the cob and green beans and then Noah finally got most of the group to watch the first half of Cars. Afterwards, we ate leftover birthday cake on the screened porch.

Day 5: Wednesday

In the morning we took the kids to breakfast because Noah had a hankering for crepes and it would cut down and the amount of time we needed to keep them quiet. He got banana, I got triple berry, and Beth and June got bagels. By the time we returned, everyone was awake and Sara and I took June to the beach. Noah opted to stay home. When I left he was playing Quirkle (http://www.mindware.com/p/Qwirkle/32016?SG=QWIRKLE.COM) with Grandmom.

At the beach, June made another friend, who turned out to be about her age, although June didn’t even reach this girl’s shoulders. They played on the sand, making more sand people and down by the water, splashing in the waves and drawing in the wet sand with their fingers—unicorns were a popular theme. June was more interested in the water, though, and Olivia in the sand, but despite this they bonded enough to hug when they parted and back at the house as June waited for her grilled cheese to cook, she composed a letter to Olivia in case she ever saw her again. (We didn’t.) When she’d finished, she told Beth a dramatic story about how she was nearly swept out to sea. (My version: She fell on her bottom in shallow water and didn’t even get her face wet.)

In the afternoon, Beth took Noah into town for orangeade and Sara and Mom took June to a bead store so she could pick out beads for a bracelet Auntie Sara would make for her.

Meanwhile, I went to the beach. (You were thinking I would do something else?) I did swim eventually, but for a long time I just sat on my towel and watched the waves. It was a cloudy afternoon, like most of the afternoons on the trip so far, cool but not so cool that I wanted more clothes than the bathing suit and t-shirt I wore. The sea was mostly gray, but green in places when the sun broke through the clouds and touched it. The waves were moderate-sized and had a steady, hypnotic rhythm. I studied the water, aware the week was more than half over, and I tried to soak up enough ocean to last me until winter.

We went out for Japanese that night at The Cultured Pearl (http://www.culturedpearl.us/) because it’s the nicest restaurant in Rehoboth with food the kids will eat. June wore her new bracelet and her new sandals along with a yellow dress with daisies my Mom bought her in North Carolina. “I’m a kid princess,” she said, twirling around after Mom dressed her. The kids loved the caged birds, the koi ponds with the bridge we walked over to get to our seats, and the stand of fake, but realistic-looking bamboo near our table. We feasted on edaname, seaweed salad, vegetable tempura and sushi, among other dishes.

Toward the middle of dinner, the kid princess started drooping. She wanted to lie down on the bench and she felt a little warm. She’d had a vaccination five days before, the kind that can create a delayed reaction. We discussed whether that might be the cause of her lethargy. She perked up before dinner was even over, though, and we decided to continue with our dessert plans of ice cream on the boardwalk. We got home late, around 8:30. The last couple blocks June was tired and complaining about being outside walking “alone in the dark when we should be in our warm, cozy beds.” For the record, I will state she was not wandering the street alone but with seven members of her extended family and also, that there was still some light in the sky, not to mention the streetlights. By 9:15, both kids were in their warm cozy beds, drifting off to sleep.

Day 6: Thursday

June slept until 7:20 (except for a diaper change at 5:15), which was a rare treat for me. Beth and YaYa took the kids to Jungle Jim’s water park (http://www.funatjunglejims.com/) in the mid-morning and Mom and Sara set off to explore the nearby town of Lewes, where they took a trolley tour, shopped and went out to lunch. I tried to catch up on blogs and then went into town to get myself an iced café con leche to enjoy on the boardwalk. Afterwards, I went for a swim, but there were almost no waves so I got back out after ten minutes. Finding myself alone in the vicinity of fried clams near lunchtime, I decided to have lunch on the boardwalk. The kids don’t know about my very occasional departures from vegetarianism. (I will eat clams because they don’t have eyes and therefore could never have looked me in the eyes.) After my semi-illicit lunch, I headed back to the house, folded some laundry and once the Jungle Jim’s party returned, I washed the chlorine off the kids in the bathtub and listened to tales of Noah’s exploits on the long slide called the Anaconda.

While Noah read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and played cards with YaYa and Carole, June and I took a long nap and afterwards I read her a chapter from The House at Pooh Corner so it was 4:30 by the time the kids and I left the house again. I had promised them another trip to Candy Kitchen (as their stores were running low) and a little beach time. It was a moderately long walk to the candy store so I knew we wouldn’t be at the beach long, but a promise is a promise and I had a hankering for something sweet, too, so off we went. After an extremely long deliberation, Noah chose more gummy sharks and some gummy frogs. While he was deciding, he dropped a lollipop on the floor, causing a network of very fine cracks to appear on its surface. I was going to make him either choose it for his candy or buy it with his own money but the salesclerk said it was not too badly damaged and we didn’t have to buy it. Meanwhile, June had picked a bag of assorted taffy and then she occupied herself by playing with the Sesame St. dolls they keep at floor level. I got cinnamon bears for myself, and chocolate-peanut butter fudge for the house. We left only to return a few minutes later because June’s taffy was missing from the bag.

It was 5:35 when we finally got to the beach. This was around the time we should have left but we stayed until 6:00. Noah was jumping around in the waves the whole time and June went back and forth between the water and the sand. Noah told me he wished he could live on an island so he could go to the beach every day. I thought it was a funny comment from a boy who often stays at the house while we’re at the beach, but I think he was sincere. He’s a homebody so it can be hard to pry him out of the house but once he’s at the beach, he always enjoys it.

The thunder started as we washed our feet at the footbath on the boardwalk and the rain started pattering on the roof just after we got inside the house. It didn’t last long but it was too damp outside to eat on the picnic table as we’d been doing, plus it was later than we’d intended to eat and we’d planned to watch Cars that night so Mom and I set up a buffet of leftovers and devilled eggs she had made and everyone camped out in the living room to eat and watch the movie. We actually managed to finish it, which made Noah happy.

Day 7: Friday

Friday morning, our party shrank down to six, as YaYa and Carole left, hoping to beat the weekend traffic.

By that morning on our last full day at the beach, the muscles around my collarbones were sore from sweeping June up into my arms whenever a too-big wave approached and I got the bright, if belated, idea of suggesting to her that she run away when a wave looked too scary instead. She took to the idea right away as it left her in control of the decision. No reprimands because I did not rescue her and no more indignant cries of “Mommy, put me down!” when I misjudged the other way. The first time she tried it she slipped and fell in the shallow water and I thought the wave would catch her but she was up on her feet and scrambling up to the dry sand lickety split. Soon she was squealing and dashing in and out of the water with abandon.

Noah got knocked over by a wave and completely submerged soon after. I was up on the beach playing in the sand with June when I saw it happen. (For the first time this year, Noah played in the ocean without me at his side.) He got to his feet and came up to us. I asked if he was okay and he said yes. I asked if it was scary and he said yes. He was subdued for about fifteen minutes and then he was back in the water. This time he cut his foot on something sharp, a tiny little cut, hard to see once the blood was washed away, but that was it for him. He didn’t go back in the water the rest of the morning, but instead sat at the water line with the little waves rushing over his legs until it was time to go up to the house for lunch. He wanted the seawater to heal his foot, he said.

That afternoon, Beth took the kids on their third visit to Funland, while I hit the beach with Mom and Sara. We stood at the water’s edge, got wet and looked for the rainbows that were forming in the sea spray. Later we met Beth at the kids at Grotto (http://www.grottopizza.com/) for pizza and gelato and then Mom and Sara packed up Mom’s car and drove back to Philadelphia so Sara could catch a flight out to Oregon the next day. And then we were four.

Day 8: Saturday

Saturday morning we packed up the house and checked out. The kids and I headed for the Sandcastle Contest while Beth looked for somewhere air-conditioned to read. It was a long walk to the sandcastles, almost from one end of the boardwalk to the other and it took a while. Along the way, we bought going-home treats (including pink cotton candy, which the kids had been wanting). Once we finally got to the north end of the boardwalk, we cooled off in the ocean for fifteen minutes or so before wandering from one sand creation to the next. Many people were just getting started so it was hard to guess what they would make, but we saw a replica of a twenty-dollar bill, a bust of President Obama, a monkey and other animals and lots and lots of castles in different styles. I liked the Gothic ones best, with their spindly towers and intricate decorations in pebbles and shells.

We met up with Beth for lunch at the crepe stand and then the kids and I went down to the water one last time to say goodbye to the ocean. As we walked toward the beach, Noah suggested we call up the cat-sitter and ask her to stay “a little longer” so we could stay in Rehoboth. How long, I asked. How about another week, Noah suggested. It sounded like a good idea to me.

We’ve been home two days now and we’re trying to get back in the swing of things. Beth goes back to work tomorrow. Today she took Noah to his appointment with an educational psychologist who we hope can tell us what kinds of help he needs to have a better year than he did in third grade. (I was going to take him but had to stay home with a sick June.) Noah resumed work on the summer math packet he’s been neglecting since the middle of June and he got back on his bike today. School starts in three weeks for him and in four for June. I’m trying to plan out the rest of our week and to remember what it is we do all day when we don’t go to the beach twice a day. It’s hard to recall. I guess that means I got real gone.

The Bad Beginning

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Steph

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.

From The Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket

Day 1: Saturday

“Isn’t anyone going to get me some veggie sticks?” June asked in a petulant tone at 9:15 a.m. We were pulling out of the driveway but she sounded as if we’d been on the road for hours. Maybe she knew something we didn’t. The drive to the Outer Banks we were hoping to make in eight hours would end up taking eleven and a half. It was the longest it’s ever taken us to get there, longer than when the kids were nurslings, longer than the time pre-kids when I was traveling with Mom and Jim and we decided to detour to see the Great Dismal Swamp and got hopelessly lost. (We never did see the swamp.)

This time it was just traffic. Over and over again on road after road, we slowed to a crawl. And then to add to the misery shortly before noon, June threw up. We pulled into a Starbucks, got her cleaned up and changed into new clothes in the parking lot and got some lunch, including a fruit cup we would later refer to as the Fruit Cup of Doom. It was purchased for Noah but he didn’t want anything to do with it. He said it tasted funny. Now half the food Noah tries tastes funny to him so I didn’t think anything of it. I ate the kiwi, which seemed fine to me, and June chowed down on the grapes.

Traffic continued to be excruciatingly slow and every now and then June would start to moan and look pale, sweaty and anguished, but she didn’t throw up again during the rest of the ride. The last time she looked really close was just before we stopped at a Taco Bell in Kill Devil Hills at seven.

All through the long drive the kids were patient and well behaved. June did cry when I told her I’d forgotten to pack her Cinderella blanket, but by that point she had been sorely tested. Noah sang the theme from Cars: “Life is a highway./I wanna ride it all night long” and then commented cheerfully that we might be riding all night long. But we found ways to pass the time. We listened to twenty Frog and Toad stories we’d downloaded for the trip and a mixed CD of kids’ music Noah made a while back. But the best entertainment was the audio version of The Bad Beginning, the first book in the Series of Unfortunate Events books Noah and I read last summer and fall. Tim Curry is utterly brilliant as the narrator. You must all download this book and listen to it at once. It’s that good. As soon as it was over I wished we had all thirteen.

Another small bonus: On the whole drive I saw only three Confederate flags (two car decals and one actual flag). Twenty-five years ago, when my family first started coming to the Outer Banks, it would have been a lot more. A bigger bonus: Because we were so late, we were driving along the loveliest stretch of dunes during the sunset.

We pulled up to our rental house at 8:45, having met my mother and stepfather in the parking lot of the realty. Despite living two and a half hours to our north and having left an hour later and having been lost for forty-five minutes (misled by their new GPS), they beat us to Avon and had been driving around, trying to find the house.

As I was trying to hustle the kids into bed, June asked for a snack. I gave her a strawberry from the fruit cup. Remember the fruit cup? Well, at 11:30 and again at midnight, June woke up vomiting. We don’t know for sure if it was the strawberry but it was too long after we got out of the car for car-sickness and she seemed perfectly healthy the next day so that’s our best guess. We threw the rest of the fruit cup away.

Unfortunately, June’s favorite doll Violet was in exactly the wrong part of the bed when June got sick. I wiped her off as best I could and hung her up in the bathroom. In the morning she looked clean, though some of her elaborate up-do had come undone and she smelled horrible. (“So you forgot her best blanket and her best doll is ruined?” Noah clarified, causing June to cry all over.) We didn’t think Violet would survive the washing machine so we hung her up on the clothesline on the deck and the sea air proved remarkably restorative. Within twenty-four hours she was nearly as good as new.

Day 2: Sunday

In the morning we explored the house. It had an airy, open floor plan on the top floor with bedrooms below. There were several decks, screened and unscreened and ocean and sound views from almost every room in the house. There was an alcove with built-in bookcases stocked with books for kids and adults that Noah called “the detective nook” for reasons no one fully understood. Our bedroom was partially in a turret and had an interesting shape. And did I mention the ocean and sound views in almost every room? I love this house.

I’d brought some work with me, revisions on an article on Coenzyme Q10 due Monday evening. It was difficult to stay in the house working so early in the trip, so I had Beth put the computer facing a window with an ocean view and I split the work into two chunks, one for Sunday afternoon and one for Monday afternoon.

Sunday morning June and I went down to the beach. She was ambivalent about the waves, sometimes wanting me to carry her in deep, sometimes seeming scared, so I had to work to find her comfort zone. In practice this meant a lot of going back and forth, down to the water, up to the sand and back again. We built castles, collected shells and took a long walk up the beach, or maybe I should say I took a walk and she took a run. The beach was sparsely populated so I felt comfortable letting her get far ahead of me and she, always one to seize whatever freedom she’s given, took off. I watched her run across the empty expanse of sand, a little figure in a turquoise and white bathing surfer-style bathing suit, tearing down the beach. Every now and then she would pause and look for me over her shoulder, but not very often.

Sunday afternoon Beth took the kids on some errands and I worked, until I got sidelined by computer problems so then I helped Mom make dinner until Beth came back and was able to get me back on track. It was Father’s day so my Dad was on my mind. I proposed we go to Dairy Queen after dinner. Ever since he died I’ve found myself taking comfort in foods I associate with him, especially ice cream. I got a chocolate malted, a favorite of his, and gave a silent toast to him while I drank it.

Day 3: Monday

Monday was the Equinox. I took both kids to the beach in the morning and we welcomed summer by splashing in the waves, making dribble castles, digging holes and observing how they changed shape as they filled with water, finding and liberating sand crabs and otherwise enjoying ourselves. Noah kept saying that maybe there would be a freak wave or a tsunami and he sounded kind of hopeful about it. Every night he reads to us from his 100 Most Dangerous Things on the Planet book (http://www.amazon.com/100-Most-Dangerous-Things-Planet/dp/0545069270). When he does so he assumes the persona of Dane Dangerfighter, a character of his own invention, who lectures and quizzes us on how to survive various dangers. Perhaps Noah wanted an opportunity to put Dane’s advice to use. Then he said I like the ocean so much I should be called TsuMommy.

I took my first beach swim of the year in the afternoon (cold water, decent waves) and collected some golden-colored shells for June, who had requested I bring back some treasure. Then I headed back up to the house and finished my article and we had a lovely first night of summer dinner (veggie dogs, corn on the cob and roasted new potatoes, with angel food cake and strawberries for dessert). After dinner, I washed the dishes while everyone else watched Cars. Noah was eager to share his favorite movie with Grandmom and Pop. It took them most of the week to finish it because we never had much time between dinner and bedtime.

Day 4: Tuesday

Having finished my work, I felt ready for an outing on Tuesday. There are a lot of possible day trips on the Outer Banks, but we wanted to stay close to the house so we could spend more time on the activity than in the car and still get back in time for June’s nap so we settled on the hiking trails in Buxton Woods (http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/northcarolina/preserves/art5593.html). Beth promised Noah it would be an adventure and it was.

Beth and I have been to Buxton Woods but not for a long time, possibly not since before Noah was born. Still the turnoff didn’t look like what either of us remembered. There was a trail map and then a long, sandy road leading through the woods to the various trailheads. In places the road had been covered with wood chips for better traction.

Beth said later there was a little voice in her head telling her to go back, that we were going to get stuck, but there was no good place to turn the car around so she drove on. And then we got stuck. We all got out of the car and looked at the wheels. The right front wheel was sunk in the deepest. We had no shovels or planks. Beth had just removed Noah’s long-handled shovel from the car that morning, but it probably would not have been up to the job. Beth got out her phone and found she had no signal, so we all headed down the road in the direction we’d come looking for a place where Beth could place a call.

“Why didn’t Dane Dangerfighter tell us what to do?” Beth asked Noah as we walked.

“Because it’s not one of the one hundred most dangerous things in the world!” he answered, somewhat exasperated. “Now if it was quicksand…”

The road was lined with ferns and pine trees. There were grasshoppers leaping along beside us and dragonflies zooming past and butterflies fluttering around us. June kept stopping to collect pine needles and to sift the dark, silty sand through her hands. Soon she was filthy. She probably thought this was the promised hike and we didn’t tell her otherwise.

We didn’t need to walk far until Beth got a signal, though it was a patchy one. It took several calls to find out her auto service would need to send someone from Nag’s Head (an hour away) and to decide to engage someone more local instead. The tow truck arrived within ten minutes of the last call. Noah got to see it in action, which for him was probably more fun than a nature hike anyway.

“You were right, Beth. That was an adventure,” Noah said as we drove home. Overall, though, it was a manageable adventure, not so long that June missed her nap, no so dangerous that we needed Dane. Beth’s service will even reimburse her for part of the towing charge.

Beth took the kids to play miniature golf that afternoon. Noah got two holes in one and on one of the two holes she bothered to finish, June beat both Noah and Beth. Meanwhile, Mom and Jim and I went to the beach. A tidal pool had formed and I saw something I’d never seen before. I’ve noticed bubbles rising from crab holes when the water covers them, but these holes were forming geysers, two to three inches tall. They were fascinating. We sat on the beach and watched a parasailor and admired the pelicans gliding over the water and thought sadly about their Gulf Coast cousins. I made a silent wish that the oil would not make it this far north, not to the Outer Banks, not to the Chesapeake Bay, and please, please, not to Rehoboth Beach, my very favorite beach of all.

After dinner and more Cars, we had root beer floats and put the kids to bed, and then I took a walk on the beach. It had been a clear day, but the sky was partially clouded over, though I could still make out the Big Dipper. There was a three-quarters moon and the sea was dark with glints of silver. Several bonfires burned and the air smelled of wood smoke. I looked for the little phosphorescent creatures I often see in the water in North Carolina, but there were none. Possibly it was too early in the season, the water too cool. There was the usual assortment of night beach-goers–people fishing, teens running around with glow sticks wrapped around their wrists and necks, kids with flashlights and nets chasing ghost crabs, and the occasional solitary walker such as myself. It was hard to leave and I got back to the house later than I intended.

Day 5: Wednesday

Wednesday morning I took Noah out to breakfast at the Froggy Dog (http://www.froggydog.com/) while Beth took June to Uglie Mugs (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ugly+mugs+coffee+and+tea+avon+NC&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=&gs_rfai=) for some one-on-one mother and child time. When we split up, we usually do it the other way around so it was nice to have some alone time with Noah.

I thought about having a meaningful conversation with him about how he was feeling about the end of the school year and changing schools but I decided to go for something lighter. I asked him what his favorite part of the trip had been so far. Golfing and getting the holes in one he answered right away and then he recounted how his ball’s exact course as it bounced off an obstacle and rolled up a hill and back down again before going in the hole. Then he added that he kind of liked the long drive. What about it, I asked, surprised. Listening to The Bad Beginning, he said and then he laughed anew at some of the amusing parts.

Next he tested the theory that when you block out one sense the others are heightened. He listened to the music playing with his eyes shut, looked at the art on the wall with his hands over his ears and tasted his juice with his nose pinched shut. Then our food came and we were absorbed in pancakes (him) and fried eggs, biscuit and grits (me). It was a fun meal.

We walked home along the beach. Noah sat in a chair someone had dug out of the sand and splashed in the surf. He wanted to get the almost healed scrapes on his knees wet. He wiped out on his scooter on the first day of summer break and Beth had told him seawater has healing powers. Of course he got his shorts all wet, but I said it was okay. Then he ran ahead of me on the beach and I found myself walking behind another one of my kids, watching, wondering how far he’d go. It’s what we so often do as parents.

Back at the house, I chatted with my mom and then left her and Noah to a game of Sorry while I went back to the beach for a morning swim. Conditions were not ideal, though. I’d had a good swim on Monday afternoon but every time I’d tried to go in since then the waves had been breaking too close to the shore, making it more likely that instead of bobbing along in shallow water between waves that I would be thrown to the gritty sand. The older I get the more cautious I get about ocean swimming. Beth says this is a good thing. I’m not sure. In either case, I hadn’t been staying in the water very long and I didn’t this time either. Even so, I hurt the big toe on my right foot when I came down on it still tucked under my foot. It hurt a lot but probably not as much as it would have if it hadn’t been immersed in cold water so I stayed in until the throbbing subsided and then I hobbled back to my towel somewhat dispirited. My younger self would have stayed in, but I’m not the fearless swimmer at forty-three that I was at thirteen. Later that day the whole foot swelled up and over the course of the next few days a reddish-purple bruise formed along the base of my first four toes and along the big toe itself.

By the time I returned to the house, Beth and June had returned from their morning adventures. After breakfast they went to the realty-owned pool. I can’t say I approve of swimming pools at the beach, but they had fun.

That afternoon Beth took June back to the pool and I took Noah to the beach. I was sorry my usual beach buddy didn’t want to come, but I was glad of some more alone time with Noah. We were able to go deeper into the water than we could with June. Noah was already in the surf as I was arranging the towel. “Mommy!” he yelled to me. “This totally rocks!” As we played by the water’s edge, he speculated about wave physics and made names for different kinds of waves. Big ones were “kings.” Little ones with surprising force were “vipers.” When he wasn’t chattering he was running and shrieking. “This is a lot of fun, but it’s also scary,” he confided. Every now and then he checked his knees to see if there had been any visible healing. He thought there had been. (In fact, later in the trip he would try to avoid getting his knees wet because he said he wanted to observe the healing process at its natural pace.) After he’d stepped on my bad foot twice, I asked him to stay to my left and he was better about remembering to keep us arranged that way than I was. Once when he was up on shore, I waded out deeper to dive under a wave and suddenly heard him talking behind me. I was pleased he was confident enough to go out that far, but also alarmed because although he’s made great strides in swimming lessons this year, he’s still an inexperienced ocean swimmer and I need to know where he is when he’s in the water. Our beach visit was cut short by a bathroom emergency, but I was glad he’d come with me.

That evening Mom and Jim went to Manteo to see the purple martins that migrate there every summer (http://www.purplemartinroost.com/). We stayed at the house and watched a little of Sleeping Beauty. June was determined to make it through the whole movie this time. (She’s scared of Malicifent.) For the portion they watched, she managed it.

Day 6: Thursday

In the morning I looked at my foot, trying to decide if the swelling had gone down. I thought maybe it had. “Your foot looks worse,” Beth said immediately upon seeing it and when I put on my Tevas, I had to admit she was right. The pain was not too bad but it felt very stiff. Undeterred, I headed down to the beach. (Beth and the kids were headed to the pool for the third time in two days.)

I ended up having my longest and best swim of the trip, but it didn’t start out that way. I was standing in the surf for the longest time dithering about whether or not to try to get past the breakers. It looked like there were some good waves out there—big, slow and gentle—but I’d have to get through a short, rough stretch to get there and I was afraid of landing on my foot wrong again. After maybe a half hour of wading in and then backing some or all of the way back and changing my mind about whether I was even trying to get in and debating whether caution is a good thing or a bad one, I saw my opportunity, a long expanse of placid sea, like a sign from the heavens. I strode in and soon I was in the sweet spot, riding up the sides of big, glossy-smooth waves and sliding back down, just as the tips of the white crests were starting to form. There was plenty of time for considered landings and mostly I landed on just my good foot. I drifted north and eventually found myself in a place, which while still quite close to the shore, was past the breakers all together, so I wasn’t so much bobbing between waves as between little swells. At this point I turned my mind to the question of how to get out. Sometimes getting out of the ocean can be as hard as getting in and sometimes a big wave just sweeps you right back to the shore, which is what happened this time.

In the late afternoon I lured the kids to the beach with the promise of the tidal pool I’d seen the last two days around that time. I wasn’t sure exactly when it would form because I didn’t have tide chart, but I was hoping for something in between 4:30 and 5:00. However, when June and I joined Mom and Jim at the water’s edge at 4:30, I could see the dry, rippled sand where it had been, far up the shore. It didn’t seem likely that the tide would progress fast enough to get there before we had to leave for dinner. So Mom played with June and I swam and Noah came down about twenty minutes later and we all played together and watched dolphins (we all saw them except Noah) until the blowing sand started to bother June and we left around 5:40. There was a trickle of water reaching the trough-like depression in the sand with each of the bigger waves by now but I didn’t mention it to anyone.

As we trudged up through the dunes, June was annoyed by the hot sand on her bare feet and then at the way the sand sifted through the holes in her crocs when she put them on. “I’m telling you,” she said, “I’m never coming to the water again, only the pool.” A few minutes later she added, “Why do they have a beach with no boardwalk and no Candy Kitchen?” Rehoboth Beach is her gold standard for beaches. She finds the Outer Banks somewhat lacking, superior natural beauty and all. I understand, the Outer Banks are more stunning but Rehoboth is more homey, more ours.

We didn’t manage to get dinner on the table until seven so the kids resumed watching Sleeping Beauty until it was ready. June cracked and ran out of the room at least twice during the scary parts. She just can’t take that witch. The kids went to bed soon after dinner and Beth and I took her laptop to the screened porch to work on the last of the several questionnaires we need to fill out for our Aspergers parent interview next month.

Day 7: Friday

Friday morning I folded the load of laundry I’d done the day before and decided to pack most of it since we were leaving the next day. I asked June to pick out two outfits, one for today and one for tomorrow. She caught on right away. “We’re leaving tomorrow? We only have one more day to go to the pool?”

It was true. Beth, who had yet to set foot on the beach, made her fourth trip to the pool that morning. I went to the beach alone and a little sad that June didn’t want to come. Still, it meant I could swim. My foot felt much better (and fit into its sandal perfectly) so I decided to start with a walk on the beach. I headed south and got into the water along the way drifted back to my towel. There wasn’t much going on beyond the breakers so I floated on the surface of the water, trying to feel the Earth’s gravity wrapping the water and me tightly to itself.

I came back up to the house for lunch. Mom, Jim and the kids had just finished watching Cars and Jim was making a fire on the grill under the house for toasting marshmallows. Mom and Jim both claimed to have the most perfectly toasted marshmallow. Mine caught fire both times and the kids’ got coated in ashes, but everyone proclaimed the sticky treats delicious.

After June’s nap, I joined Mom and Jim at the beach while Beth and the kids went out for ice cream and ran some errands. They were supposed to join us to launch the rocket Beth and Noah had constructed from a kit the day before, but the sky was growing dark and we weren’t sure if they’d beat the rain. They did, showing up at 4:30 just as Mom and Jim were about to call it quits and go back to the house. The first and third launch attempts were duds but they got in one good flight in between before running out of fuel (baking soda and vinegar). Then Beth went down to the ocean to rinse off the sand and so she could say she’d been in the water. June and I lingered on the beach after everyone else went up. June found a gull’s feather and immediately made plans to glue it to a picture frame, thus combining two of her main interests, nature and arts and crafts. As we walked up the path through the dunes back to the house, it started to drizzle.

At the house, June colored, Beth and Noah played Battleship, and we ate pizza, packed and cleaned. Our beach week was all but over.

Day 8: Saturday

We woke and packed and cleaned some more. It had stormed during the night and at 7:00 a.m., we could still see streaks of lightning in the sky. By 9:00, the rain had let up and Noah and I went down to the beach to say our goodbyes. We let the waves rush over our bare feet (fourteen times was the number he thought right). This is an old ritual of ours, but he added a new part. We each picked up a shell and said, “Goodbye, ocean!” into it and threw it into the dark blue-green waves.

Then we came back to the house, finished packing and cleaning and drove home. Admittedly, our trip got off to a bad beginning and no beach trip that does not end in someone telling me I’ve won my very own beach house can be said to have a truly happy ending, but despite the tow-truck incident and my injured foot (which is still bothering me after two days at home), I’d have to say there were more than a few happy things in the middle.

Tho’ Much is Taken, Much Abides

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Steph

And did you get what
You wanted from life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved on the earth.

“Late Fragment” by Raymond Carver

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,–
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

From “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson

These are the poems I read at my father’s memorial service on Sunday. I put off practicing them for the longest time, mainly because I didn’t want to think about the service. I did buy some new clothes for myself and for Noah in various shades of gray and blue, after Beth researched the question of what to wear to a memorial service (black or muted colors is the answer if you need to go to one yourself). Still, I resisted even looking at the poems until a few days before the service. The grief I felt after Dad’s death in January had faded more quickly than I thought it would, probably because I saw him so infrequently—he just wasn’t part of my day-to-day life. I knew this was going to bring it all back and make it real again and I wasn’t relishing that. My sister said she’d been putting off writing her speech, presumably for the same reason.

But she wrote the speech and I practiced the poems and two o’ clock Sunday found us seated in the journalism building at Columbia University waiting to begin. It had been something of a wild ride getting there.

We woke that morning at my mom’s house outside Philadelphia. We’d driven up Saturday and were planning to leave June with my mom and stepfather. As we were sorting items to take with us to New York and those to leave at Mom’s house, I discovered we didn’t have Noah’s nice shoes. I could remember getting them out of his closet, but I had no clear memory of putting them in his suitcase. It looked like Noah would be wearing his crocs to the service unless we stumbled across a shoe store en route between Penn Station, the guesthouse and Columbia because we didn’t have time for a detour. At least he’d be wearing underwear, though, because when we realized we hadn’t packed any for him the night before, my mom had run out to Target to buy some. If you’re scratching your head and remembering the times last summer when we left his pajamas at home (West Virginia trip) or his whole suitcase (North Carolina trip) and wondering why we can’t pack for Noah—I have no idea.

But as I was considering Noah’s shoes, Beth told me, “We have a bigger problem.” She couldn’t find the folder with the addresses of everywhere we needed to go, the maps she’d printed and our train tickets.

“It’s okay,” she said, not sounding at all okay. “We can buy new tickets.” I agreed, though we were both nervous on the way to the station. I wondered, would there be time? Would there be seats left on the train? But there was no way to find out, other than to go. I didn’t even tell my mom as we left her house, because I didn’t want her to fret. Beth and I had that covered. To take my mind off the tickets, I read the poems aloud to Beth and Noah as we waited for a SEPTA train to take us to 30th Street Station. I explained the Tennyson one to Noah after I’d finished. He said he’d understood “about 50%” of it.

Once in the station we found a ticket kiosk and purchased new tickets. There was time. There was room on the train. After an hour and a half train ride, we were in New York. We took the subway to our guesthouse. Our lodging had also been the source of a little anxiety because my uncle David had found it and the price seemed just too good to be true. Would the neighborhood be dicey, would it be a roach-infested dump? Online reviews proved positive, though, so we’d made the reservations. And it was fine. The neighborhood felt safe and it was clean and quiet inside. It had a shabby, eccentric charm. Space was at a premium and used creatively. Our shower was not in the bathroom, but in a closet down the hall. There was a pretty pressed tin ceiling in our room and the bed was comfortable. Now the front door of the building was hard to unlock and it was a little tricky to track down the manager so we could pay and then when we found out it had to be cash, we had to go searching for an ATM, and getting the cot we’d requested for Noah and sheets for it was another adventure, but we paid $72 for three people to stay in New York so I am most definitely not complaining. I will take David’s advice on lodging any day.

We ate lunch at a pizzeria around the corner (where we found the ATM we needed). It was greasy and delicious. I really liked the garlic rolls and wrapped the leftovers in foil to take with me. After a quick and fruitless search for boys’ dress shoes in some neighborhood shops, we met up with David and walked to the service.

David is my father’s brother, two years younger. I hadn’t seen him since my father’s fiftieth birthday party in 1993, but I’d seen some recent pictures on his wife’s Facebook page just a few weeks ago and I’d been surprised by how much more he looks like Dad as he’s aged. My first sight of those familiar features online hurt and delighted me at same time. So I was even more surprised to see him face to face and to discover he’s shaved his head. I was a tiny bit disappointed because it definitely reduced the resemblance. Soon I was seeing it again, though. He has the same eyes, not just the dark coffee-brown color, but also something in the expression and the way the skin wrinkles around them. David’s nose is similar, too, but it was his eyes that felt comforting.

David lives in Costa Rica, so he and Noah spoke a little in Spanish as we walked to the university and he told a story of how when they were six and eight, Dad made him pick a library book to take home before he could read because Dad “wasn’t going to have a brother who didn’t read.” David says he learned quickly, partly out of intimidation on my father’s part and partly out of a desire to emulate his older brother and parents, all of whom gathered in the living room to read each evening.

There were at least one hundred and fifty people at the service and at times it felt like I spoke with most of them, either beforehand or afterwards, at the reception. It was overwhelming for me so I can’t imagine how it must have been for Ann. A lot of the people attending I’d never met, but they wanted to extend their condolences. Others remembered me from when I was “this high.” They all held their hands at about June-height. Apparently, a hand held thirty six and a half inches from the floor is the universal symbol for “small child.” A lot of them I did remember, though. I saw Ann’s brother Peter and her aunt Doris and uncle Art for the first time in decades. Lee, the trainer for the racehorses Dad used to own, was there. There were old neighbors, too, but mostly there were Dad’s colleagues. It was a writer’s send-off and you could tell. There were ten eulogies.

We sat in the front row, which was reserved for family and speakers, close enough to smell the big bouquet of pink and white lilies and carnation onstage. Noah was the only child in the room and he did a reasonably good job sitting still through a lot of long, grown-up speeches. When he started to kick his legs too vigorously, Beth would lay a hand on his thighs and he’d stop.

I won’t try to summarize the eulogies. When a wordsmith dies, it’s amazing how much text is generated in the form of public obituaries and blog posts and private emails, letters and cards. My stepmother has been forwarding all the emails and links she receives to me and to my sister and I have read it all. I think the most important thing I have learned from reading and listening to all these memories and observations of my father is what a valued mentor he was to other writers. Countless people have said he gave them confidence in themselves and made them better writers.

Two of the eulogies were more personal. Sara spoke movingly about Dad as a father—the eccentric ways in which he showed his love for us. Dad’s friend Bob Schwabach talked about their friendship and how he introduced my father to the racetrack. It was a long, rambling and funny speech that ended, “He was the smartest guy I knew and I loved him.” What more needed to be said? I concluded with the poems and that was the end of the program.

At the reception, Sara taped Schwabach and Lee telling more stories about Dad and we ate tiny cupcakes, cheesecakes and brownies. My dad had a wicked sweet tooth and he loved coffee so I thought it was fitting that at the reception they served nothing but coffee and dessert.

Sara had been to Dad and Ann’s apartment earlier in the day and sorted through some things. She brought me the following mementos: a yellow metal toy car, a wooden elephant wearing a beaded harness, a watch, a leather shoulder bag, some family photos and a t-shirt from the Green Parrot Bar in Key West. The back says “No Sniveling Since 1890.” It was originally printed “Snivelling” but Dad had used White Out to correct the spelling. I love this. She also gave me a bag full of sympathy cards on loan from Ann.

We ate dinner at The Deluxe Diner (http://www.deluxenyc.com/) near Columbia. My plan was to order a chocolate malted because Dad loved them. Sara was going to get one, too, and when the waitress told us they were out of malt powder such a gasp went out around the table that the poor woman was taken aback.

Despite the lack of malteds, it was a good meal, with good company. David and Sara and I laughed about how many people spoke or wrote about Dad’s humility or lack of ego, because that was not at all how we had known him. (I should say this comment was almost always in a professional context, usually about how he made sure his writers got credit and never tried to steal their glory when they won prizes. Under his stewardship there were a lot of prizes for writers at The Inquirer.) David said when I was reading the poems he didn’t want me to finish because it would mean the service was over and we would all need to move on.

Monday morning, we said our goodbyes to David, visited the New York Hall of Science (http://www.nysci.org/) in Queens and made our long journey home (three trains, then a three-hour drive). While June was at school this morning, I read through the stack of sympathy cards. They were different than the ones I received, more detailed, because they came, for the most part, from people who knew Dad. They also came from a generation of people who own dark-bordered stationary for writing letters to the bereaved. A couple of the letters were typed on actual typewriters. Somehow, this really brought home that when my father’s peers follow him in death, it will be the end of an entirely different era from the one in which we live, and that made me sad all over.

But as so many people have pointed out, the dead live on in the lives of those they’ve touched. Much abides.

I’ve been tagged to do the Ten Things You Might Not Know About Me meme by not one but two bloggers, Tara of 040508 (http://www.040508.blogspot.com/) and Tyffany of Come What May (http://btmommy.blogspot.com/). I think the name is self-explanatory, but I can never do these memes straight. I always have to find an angle that turns it into something I really want to write about at that moment, so here are ten things about me that come from my father (some of which you probably already do know if you read here regularly, but bear with me.) I see some of them reflected in his brother and my sister and my kids, too, because we’re all part of what abides, along with the mark he left on the writers with whom he worked and on American journalism as a whole. Here’s the list:

1. My brown eyes
2. My high forehead
3. My sweet tooth
4. My stubborn streak
5. My pedagogical bent
6. My love of the written word
7. My love of narrative
8. My love of newspapers
9. The most excellent last name a lesbian could want
10. My children with their high foreheads, stubborn streaks and love of words and stories.

When I was pregnant with Noah I visited Dad and showed him the ultrasound picture. “He has the Lovelady forehead,” Dad commented. I agreed and ventured that I thought he had the Higgins nose, too. “Baby noses mean nothing,” he said in his exasperatingly imperious way. While they are also Higginses, and Allens and Niehauses and, genetically at least, parts of families we don’t know, they are most definitely Lovelady children.

Rites of Spring

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Steph

Spring has now unwrapped the flow’rs,
Day is fast reviving,
Life in all her growing pow’rs,
To’rds the light is striving.
Gone the iron touch of cold,
Winter time and frost time
Seedlings working through the mould,
Now wake up for lost time.

From “The Flower Carol,” Folk Song
http://books.google.com/books?id=7zF6mDo_GJgC&pg=PA59&dq=jean+ritchie+flower+carol&cd=1#v=onepage&q=jean%20ritchie%20flower%20carol&f=false

April Fools Day
No one played any April Fools jokes on me this year but the representative from Washington Gas might have thought I was playing one on him when I called to report a gas leak in our basement that turned out to be…nothing.

Thursday morning I was putting a load of laundry in the dryer when it wouldn’t start. A half hour later I was back in the basement when I thought I smelled a faint odor of gas near the dryer. I called the emergency line and took June out to play in the yard while we waited for someone to come check out the situation. We had to wait about an hour and while I was sitting and watching June collect the tiny white wildflowers in the yard, I noticed the grass was starting to get long so I decided to give the lawn its first mowing of the year. I got the front and side yards done and pruned the butterfly bush, which suffered a lot snapped branches when it was buried under three feet of snow back in February.

Around noon I proposed a picnic lunch to June and right around then the service rep showed up. I took him down to the basement. As we approached the dryer I noticed the smell was completely gone. He turned on his meter, which detected nothing. He checked all around the basement and found nothing. Then he left and though he was very professional and told me to call again if I smelled gas again, I couldn’t help feeling a little foolish.

I should mention a peculiar thing about myself here. I sometimes smell things that aren’t there. It happened most often in my late twenties and it was usually pleasant smells like baking cookies. It still happens occasionally but not often and since the dryer was broken and I was under the impression it was a gas dryer (turns out it’s electric) it seemed logical and it never occurred to me it might be one of my olfactory hallucinations.

June was still excited about the picnic so I went through with it. I made a pitcher of lemonade (“the bestest lemonade in the world” June told me), laid a beach towel out on the lawn and we ate vegetarian salami, American cheese, saltines and sliced strawberries amid the damp clothes hanging on the drying rack and draped over the slide, the soccer net and our lawn furniture.

There were errands I’d planned for that morning that didn’t get done but I did get an hour and a half outside on a warm, sunny day, a half-mowed lawn and two loads of laundry with that incomparable dried-outside smell. Maybe I wasn’t so foolish after all.

Good Friday
“Is the beach talking to you?” Beth asked me. We had just gotten back into the car after a pit stop at for lunch at the Taco Bell near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

“Yes,” I answered.

“”What is it saying?” she wanted to know.

“Why on earth did you take that job?” I said. We were headed to Rehoboth for weekend getaway in the middle of Noah’s week and a half long spring break, but I would need to spend a few hours of it at the computer working on an article for Sara about an enzyme derived from fermented soybeans that has cardiovascular benefits. I’d hoped to have it mostly finished before we left, but due to the cats keeping me up half the night howling one night and only being able to find a sitter for one morning when I hoped for two, I’d only gotten about a third of the way through it and Sara needed my draft by Monday.

We arrived at our hotel around 4:00. There was a hold up getting into our room, but by 4:45 the kids and I were on the beach making sand castles. June preferred to decorate hers with shells while Noah elected to tunnel under his until they collapsed. He has loved doing this for years, ever since he learned it was an authentic medieval siege technique.

The last time we came to the beach in April it was so cold the kids wore their winter coats, but it was sunny and almost 70 degrees and we were all in bare feet. The warm sand felt good under my feet. Even the shocking little frisson of the frigid water felt good, too, as I fetched bucket after bucket full of water for the kids. I almost never feel so alive and present in my body as I do at the beach.

After a visit to Candy Kitchen (Noah got gummy teeth; June got a foot-shaped lollipop—what’s up with the body parts, kids?) and a pizza dinner, we bathed the kids and put them to bed. I slipped down to the hotel lounge for a half hour’s work on the article and then the sea called me and I answered.

A fog had fallen and the wind was whipping it around the beach in tatters. The air was cold and wet. Even in corduroys and a fleece jacket I was soon chilled and my hair hung damp around my face. I watched the waves crash over the remains of someone else’s sand castle and then I walked back to the hotel, thrilled and joyful.

It was a Good Friday indeed.

Let’s Go Fly a Kite
We saw the Easter Bunny on Rehoboth Avenue after breakfast on Saturday, or rather a person in an Easter Bunny costume, as June was careful to correct me when I said, “Look! It’s the Easter Bunny.” Much to my surprise, she went right up to the Bunny and selected a Starburst from the basket of candy and even posed for a picture with the big rodent.

Beth took the kids to play miniature golf while I holed up in the room and worked. In the afternoon, after June’s nap, we took June’s new Barbie kite to the beach. Yes, you read that right. One of June’s friends gave it to her for her birthday. The picture on it could be worse—it’s just her head, but still… Barbie has breached the perimeter.

The morning had been cold and foggy so we’d put off the kite-flying expedition until afternoon, hoping the fog would burn off, but it didn’t. Still, Beth got the job done, getting the kite into the air. I never thought I’d see Beth flying a Barbie kite on the beach, but now I have. The amusement factor made it almost worth owning a Barbie kite. Almost.

Easter
The kids awoke Easter Sunday to find the Bunny had left two chocolate bunnies (milk chocolate for June and white chocolate for Noah) on the bedside table in the hotel room. It was a down payment on the candy they’d find in their baskets once we got home.

The day was warm and sunny. June and I played for hours on the beach and took a long walk down the boardwalk. She tested my hypothesis that no matter how many buckets of water I carried to her she could not make a puddle that would stay. She rode the car on the boardwalk with the clown that used to scare her. She made multiple attempts to talk me into another visit to Candy Kitchen, each as if the previous conversation had never taken place. She admired the “eagles,” as she calls them.

I could tell when church let out because all of a sudden the beach and boardwalk filled up with little girls in fancy dresses and boys in polo shirts and khakis or madras shorts. All the people in their finery gave the scene a festive feel. It was the kind of day when cold weather was such a recent memory and warmer weather seemed so imminent, that we saw people in everything from winter coats to bikinis. The sartorial diversity was a truly glorious thing.

We left Rehoboth after a boardwalk lunch and drove home. The first hour of the ride was pleasantly quiet. June was sleeping and Noah was reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. We met up with YaYa and Aunt Carole in Silver Spring. They’ve come for a brief visit to see the cherry blossoms. We ate on the patio at Eggspectations (http://www.eggspectations.com/usa/index.html). They kept getting our orders wrong, but we made do with what we got and when they comped us a free dessert and brought the wrong one, it was just too funny to be annoying. (I did make them bring the right one, though, because it was a slice of Smith Island cake—http://www.smithislandbakingco.com/– a Maryland tradition I’ve heard of but never sampled and which I’d spied in the dessert case when we arrived.)

We all came back to the house to dye Easter eggs and eat Easter candy. YaYa and Carole talked about how they loved the simplicity of dyeing eggs and discussed plans to make their own dye from onion skins one year. They left for their hotel before we applied the stickers with eyes, noses and mouths and taped little hats to the tops of our now not so simple colored eggs.

We got the kids bathed and in bed. Beth fell asleep in her clothes on the bed before I got June settled down. It had been an eventful weekend.

Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now
I love the cherry blossoms, enough to go every year despite the hassles, and there are hassles no matter how you go. Parking is hard to come by, the shuttles from the remote parking lots are not particularly convenient and going by Metro adds a lot of time to an already long trip. We decided on Metro this year but it was clear from our discussion of logistics that morning that there was no way we could get home by noon, which is the latest I like to get June home from a morning outing.

We left the house at 8:15 drove to Silver Spring and met YaYa and Carole at their hotel. From there we walked to Starbucks, picked up some snacks and boarded the Metro. It was already 10:15 when we arrived at the Tidal Basin. June was complaining she was tired before we even arrived. We’ve been stroller-free for about two months (the big storm that left sidewalks impassable for weeks was the impetus) and on some days it’s been harder than others. I had a feeling this was going to be one of those days. I told Beth I didn’t think we were going to make it all the way around the perimeter. We rested and ate for ten minutes or so by the water before we starting walking. We set a goal of reaching the FDR memorial, which was slightly less than half way around.

Noah had a map and pretended to be a tour guide as he read to us about the points of interest we passed along the way. June kept stopping to collect petals from the ground. When YaYa and Carole planned their trip, the peak blooming period was supposed to extend into this week, but warm weather caused the blossoms to open early and we’d missed the peak. More than half the blossoms were already off the trees, but it was still lovely. It’s always lovely. We admired the Jefferson Memorial across the water and posed by the stone lantern. As we approached the FDR memorial, it was eleven and June was really dragging. We didn’t go through the whole thing because it was so late, but the kids enjoyed seeing the waterfalls.

On the way back I picked June up and carried her every time we got significantly behind the others. I would carry her until we caught up and then I’d put her down again. We proceeded this way, with June whining, “I want my nap!” over and over again until Beth made threats against her Easter candy if she continued. She continued to whimper from time to time, but she didn’t say the word nap again after that. As we passed the Department of Agriculture, we saw a landscaping crew digging up some tulips that hadn’t even finished blooming yet. Who knows why? The way they are constantly changing the plantings down on the mall is irritatingly wasteful. Anyway, the gardener must have thought the same thing because he offered a bunch of tulips (with two bulbs still attached) to June. June ran to show them to Beth, arriving before I could with the explanation and Beth gasped, thinking (naturally) that June had yanked them out of the ground. We carried them home to put it water and I will try planting the two bulbs in the yard. We have crocuses, daffodils, hyacinth, irises and tiger lilies but no tulips, so it was a fortuitous gift.

Our first train was delayed for ten or fifteen minutes by a sick passenger on another train ahead of us on the track so it was a relief to finally get moving and to transfer to the second train, where we could sit down and rest our weary feet. I was positive June would fall asleep on the train and ruin her nap but some how she stayed awake not only on both trains but in the car, too, though it was a close thing. In fact, when Beth asked me if she was asleep and I said no, June insisted that she was and she didn’t seem to be playing a game.

We got home at 1:15 and June dawdled over lunch so it was nearly two by the time she fell asleep. She then slept for almost two hours. I was intending to lie down for just a little while and then get up and work but I fell asleep and slept for almost a half hour. Spring can be exhilarating, but it’s also exhausting.

Tidings

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Steph

God rest ye merry, gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Savior
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

From “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” traditional Christmas carol

I could bring you tidings of comfort and joy from our Christmas at my mother and stepfather’s house. My sister and her boyfriend Dune came east for the first Christmas in four years so we had a full house. We made gingerbread cookies on the morning of Christmas Eve, which June decorated so thoroughly with raisins that Dune asked her if she’d like some gingerbread with her raisins. That afternoon we went to Longwood Gardens (http://www.longwoodgardens.org/) and toured the conservatory, which was full of poinsettias and Christmas trees as well as the usual flowers and plants, and we walked through gardens at dusk, winding our way through the trees strung with Christmas lights and stopping to watch the light show at the fountain while music from The Nutcracker played and the lights turned the snow every color of the rainbow while we stomped our feet to keep them warm.

On Christmas morning the kids were thrilled with their presents. Santa came through with the pink princess tent and Clara (who is now called Violet) was waiting for June inside it when she came down the stairs. June’s been toting the doll around with her and sleeping with it ever since. June was almost comically gracious while we opened presents, telling each person who gave her a gift, “It’s just what I wanted,” as she opened the stuffed ladybug, unicorn slippers, magnetic dress-up doll, etc. Noah, remembering the pirate treasure hunts Jim used to organize for him when he was younger, organized his own for Jim, complete with a rhyming poem to lead him to the treasure he’d buried in the woods near their house. (I helped him pick a hiding spot and gave him some advice on the poem when he was worried about the meter being off.) Noah got several games for Christmas and enjoyed playing Sleeping Queens (http://www.gamewright.com/gamewright/index.php?section=games&page=game&show=140) with Beth and Quirkle (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/25669/qwirkle) with Sara and Beth in the days immediately after Christmas. He’s looking forward to jumping on his mini-trampoline, once we set it up, and to playing with the baking-soda-and-vinegar-fueled rocket and making pizza with the pizzeria kit. We had a delicious dinner and June charmed my mom by telling her that the table was “beautiful” when she saw it set with the tablecloth, pink candles and pine needle-and-flower centerpiece. The children were preternaturally well behaved, leading my mom and Sara to ask why on earth I say they fight all the time and June has temper tantrums (though Dune did witness one when a raisin fell off a piece of gingerbread).

I’m not going to write at length about any of that, though, partly because I wasn’t there for a lot of it, and partly because I have other tidings, sadder ones. The day after Christmas, on a cold, rainy morning, I took the train up to New York to visit my father, bearing presents from my sister and myself and from the kids and some of the freshly baked gingerbread. Beth and I had discussed going up together with the kids, but since it would be the first time I’ve seen him since I learned of his cancer diagnosis in late August, I decided it would be better to go alone so we could spend some time together without the distraction of the kids. My sister spent Thanksgiving with him at his vacation home in Key West, so I knew he was not well, but soon after I arrived, Dad took me to his bedroom and told me that his cancer has returned and it’s more widespread than before. It’s back in his throat where it started, and it’s also in lungs and, well, it doesn’t look good.

We all thought he had it beat, so I’m still reeling from the news. When he told me I was too shocked to even cry, though I’ve cried plenty in the past few days. I spent a lot of that day staring out the window at his neighbor’s Christmas lights and at the people walking through the streets of the Upper West Side, four stories down, when we weren’t talking, or trying to read or eating (he ate a misshapen gingerbread man with relish, being sure to tell Ann that June made it). I found myself looking frequently at photographs of my children—on our Christmas card on my dad’s bedside table or in framed photos on the mantle in the living room. It was comforting to see their faces looking back at me. I know people my age who have lost parents, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking he’s too young—only sixty six—and I’m too young—forty two—for this to be happening, but of course, we aren’t. No one is too young.

Not that he’s dying right away. In about a week and a half, he and Ann are heading for Key West, where they will be spending the rest of the winter and part of the spring. It will be a better place for him than their apartment in New York, a fourth-floor walkup. He can sit in the sun and swim in their pool. They have friends nearby. I’m glad they’re going, although it will make it harder for me to see him. I’m considering a short visit and my sister, who’s childless and self-employed, is considering a longer one.

The next day was warmer and sunny. I left about a half hour earlier than I needed to so I could walk around and get some fresh air before descending into the subway. I ended up sitting on a bench in the little park outside the 72nd Street subway stop, absently sipping a coffee I’d picked up along the way, telling myself he’s not dying right now. We could have years even, time enough for the kids to get to know their smart, funny, interesting grandfather better than they do now and for him to get to know them.

Overall, though, I am more dismayed than comforted or joyful right now.

You’d Better Not Cry, I’m Telling You Why

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Steph

You’d better watch out, you’d better not pout
You’d better not cry, I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming town

From “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Gillespie Coots
http://www.6lyrics.com/music/bruce_springsteen/lyrics/santa_claus_is_coming_to_town_coots_gillespie.aspx

“Don’t sit there!” June cried, as I started to slide into the seat next to her at the Taco Bell near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge late Friday afternoon. We were eating an early dinner en route to Rehoboth for our annual Christmas shopping trip.

I stood and stared at her, waiting for an explanation. “Lillian’s sitting there,” she said. Early in the drive, she’d informed us that her older sister Lillian, who is five years old, was sitting in the back seat, in between her and Noah. Noah has had the same imaginary mouse friend since he was three years old, but June’s imaginary friends come and go so quickly it’s hard to keep track of them. In fact, while we were at Taco Bell, she acquired two more sisters. One was named Sally and I can’t remember the baby’s name.

A classmate of hers has a baby brother on the way and June’s a bit put out that we refuse to supply her with a baby sibling as well. She seems to think the Yellow Gingko is getting an unfair advantage here. At least that baby is a boy because otherwise June would be even more jealous. She really wants a “she baby.” Along with June’s newfound attentiveness to gender norms has come a preference for all things female, the more insistently marked as female the better. The stuffed penguin with the ribbon on its head is better than the one with the Santa hat, for instance, because “it’s a girl and I like girls.”

We arrived at our hotel around 7:15. There was enough time to let the kids burn off some of their pent-up energy from the drive jumping on the beds. I was hoping by bedtime they’d be calm and sleepy so I could slip away for a walk on the beach. Silly me.

Well, they were in bed by 8:05, but the sleeping part wasn’t happening. We’d put them in one double bed, reserving the other one for ourselves. Noah and June have never slept in the same bed before and the novelty of the arrangement was exciting. So exciting June felt the need to poke Noah repeatedly, causing him to squeal and squirm and jump out of the bed from time to time. Around 8:30 I gave up trying to get them to sleep and I decided to leave for my walk. I told Beth she was authorized to separate them if she thought it was the only way to get them to sleep and to issue any consequences or enticements to sleep she thought might work. June started to cry as I left. Wincing with guilt, I ignored her and slipped out the door.

Even though we were in an oceanfront hotel, it was a ten-minute walk to the beach because the section of the boardwalk in front of the hotel is undergoing repairs and there’s no beach access for several blocks. Once I got to the boardwalk, I was surprised to see the colored lights that usually light up the boardwalk around Christmas were nowhere in evidence. Even worse, I didn’t see Santa’s house. Half the reason we come to Rehoboth in December is to see Santa in his natural habitat. Yes, our children believe (or believed in Noah’s case) that the only real Santa you see this time of year is the one at the Rehoboth boardwalk. If he wasn’t there, we’d be in trouble the next day.

I took a short walk on the beach, but I was too disturbed by the Santa problem to fully enjoy it. I decided to go back to Rehoboth Avenue and scout around. I tried the bandstand first, then the area in front of the huge Christmas tree. No Santa house. Just as I was about to give up I spied it. It was on the sidewalk in front of Grotto Pizza. Relieved, I checked his hours and found Santa would be receiving visitors starting at 3 p.m. Saturday.

I returned to the room at 9:15. I was sure Noah would be asleep by then but I wasn’t so sure about June. She’s been resisting bedtime the past few months and it would not be unusual for her to still be up at 9:15, even at home. I tried to enter the room as quietly as possible. Both Noah and June sat straight up in bed. I was back! Where had I been? Why did I take so long? Beth reported they’d consulted with each other and decided I was out buying them Christmas presents because there was no other explanation for such a lengthy absence. After they came to this conclusion, June composed and sang a ballad about how I’d left them and was never coming back. (Both of the children sing non-stop but whereas Noah’s singing has the cheerful tone of show tunes, June’s songs resemble mournful-sounding mid-century folk music. Think Joan Baez, circa 1959.)

I lay down with the children and sang some lullabies in hopes of getting them to sleep but the poking had resumed and I decided to separate them. Beth joined Noah in his bed and I carried a limp and exhausted June to the other bed. I told her I was going to take a shower and then I’d come to bed with her. Noah fell asleep before I emerged from the bathroom, but it was past ten before June slept. I think Beth fell asleep before she did. Once the room was filled with the sleeping breathing, I stood in front of the sliding glass doors and watched the waves crashing on the beach for ten minutes before I crawled back into bed. I fell asleep listening to the sound of the sea.

Noah popped out of bed at 6:05. He went to the bathroom so he could turn on a light to read without disturbing anyone. June was up by 6:30. I was hoping she’d sleep later because she’d been up so late, but no dice.

Intermittent rain in the morning and steady rain in the afternoon was forecast so our plan was for me to take the kids to play on the beach after breakfast if it wasn’t raining since it might be our only chance all day. Since we’re always up for hours before any stores open, it seemed like a good plan: play on the beach, shop, lunch, nap, Santa, more shopping, dinner. Well, it was raining pretty steadily when we woke up, and still raining during the reconnaissance mission June and took to see what restaurants were open at 7:30, and still raining while we ate our blintzes and bagels at the Gallery Espresso (http://thegalleryespresso.com/index.html). (I had the pumpkin blintzes, which I recommend if pumpkin pie for breakfast sounds like a good idea to you.) It was a hard, cold rain, too, so the beach was out and it was past nine when the first few shops open so we decided to start shopping.

Beth and June went to Browse About Books (http://www.browseaboutbooks.com/) while Noah and I swung by the hotel so he could change shirts. (The berry blitzes he ate for breakfast were hard on his pale blue button down.) When we got to the bookstore, we found June pushing around a little shopping cart and filling it with many items, quite of few of them pink and sparkly. I tried explaining that when we Christmas shop, we try to select items the recipient will like and not things we like. June considered this and suggested brightly that we just buy everything in the cart for her.

“I suppose you’ve already had this conversation,” I said to Beth. She nodded. We decided to let June continue with her shopping unfettered for a little while longer so we could browse for our own gifts. But eventually the moment of reckoning had to come. I picked through her cart and actually a few salvageable items. There was a little book that allows you to write limericks by filling in the blanks. Noah likes poetry and Mad Libs so we thought it would work as a gift for him. There was also something crafty I thought my sister might enjoy doing with June so we said she could buy that, too, for Auntie Sara. Everything else would have to stay in the store, we told her. June was crushed. How could she leave Lila at the store? Lila was rag doll in a princess costume with blonde hair streaked with pink. It was a bad sign that June had given her a name. Clearly, she was in love.

Beth threw out some broad hints that maybe June would get something like Lila for Christmas. Then she suggested they take a picture of her holding Lila so she could keep that as a memento. They were still deep in negotiations as I wound my way to the checkout counter with June’s purchases, a birthday card for my stepfather, and a copy of Black Beauty for Noah. He’s been reading the A-Z Mystery series (http://www.ronroy.com/atoz/), which is so poorly written it inspired me to buy him some classics. There was a book signing by Bam Margera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bam_Margera) scheduled for noon and an hour before the start time, the store was jam-packed with teenagers standing in a line that snaked through the aisles, so we agreed I’d wait for them at the front of the store instead of trying to fight my way back to the children’s area.

As I waited I heard crying. That sounds familiar, I thought. I hoped it was someone else’s kid, but I didn’t think it was. Beth arrived with a sobbing, doll-less June in tow. She left her with me as she went to make her own purchases. As Beth walked away I asked if I should offer to make our previously scheduled stop at Candy Kitchen our next stop. “That sounds like a great idea,” Beth said. With that promise, June’s tears started to taper off. And once we were in the store and she had a lollipop of her own, she was even able to listen to Beth’s instructions about what kind of treats certain people like best and to look for them. I’m not saying she’s embraced the spirit of giving yet (that’s a long, multi-part lesson) but I think we made a little headway.

After lunch and a nap, it was time to visit Santa. Still curled up in bed with her, I told June that Santa might say “Ho Ho ho,” and then he would ask her name. Concern crossed June’s sleepy face, “But he knows,” she said.

“He might not recognize you from last year since you’ve grown so much,” I said, thinking fast.

June beamed. “He’ll be surprised to see I growed into three!” she said.

Noah, who hasn’t believed in Santa for two years, had agreed to go through the motions for June’s sake. He went into the house and greeted Santa. Santa asked if he knew what he needed to do to get presents. What? Listen to his mother and try his best in school, Santa answered. Then he asked if Noah knew what he wanted. Noah was coy and wouldn’t say. Santa knows, Santa assured him. Then Santa turned to June, who needed a little convincing to step into the house, even with Noah still in the room. Santa said she didn’t need to sit on his lap. Some children like to touch his finger to see if he’s real, he suggested. June held out her finger and they touched fingertips briefly. Did she know what she wanted? She was unable to speak. I asked Noah to convey her request, which she’d gone over with us many times during the past few weeks. A princess tent, Noah said.

“A princess tent. We have a lot of those in the workshop,” he assured her.

Then Santa’s assistant gave both kids little bags of cookies and we left.

June was keyed up from her encounter with Santa. “We didn’t shake hands. We shook fingers!” she said giddily.

The rain was still coming down but I hadn’t been to the beach all day and I couldn’t wait any longer, so I got myself a 20-ounce hot cranberry tea and wrapped a wool scarf over my head (it was too windy for an umbrella and my jacket has no hood) and I went out to brave the elements. No one can say I am the beach’s fair weather friend.

At five, we met up for dinner at Grotto’s. There the kids got balloons. Noah’s was red and he named it Cherry. June’s was pink and she named it Pig. Pig met a sad end in the hotel room and for the rest of the weekend June carried the scraps around with her, saying, “Pig was my most favorite.” Noah kept speculating about whether or not Cherry would pop and neither Beth nor I laughed. We didn’t even crack a smile. We are that good.

When the sun rose on Sunday morning, the skies were blue with big, puffy pink clouds. I took the kids to play on the beach after breakfast. June and I built and decorated five sand castles with shells and pebbles and sea grass and I built several more for Noah and June to stomp on. The kids, who had not had much outdoor time that didn’t involve hurrying from hotel to stores to restaurants and back the day before, tore around the beach like wild things. June traveled long distances in search of pebbles that were identical to the ones near her castle site. Noah got too close to the water while trying to collect sea foam and soaked his feet. (He was the only one of us not wearing boots.) We left after forty minutes, only because of Noah’s wet feet.

Sometime Sunday morning, June had a brainstorm. We could go get Clara from the store and show her to Santa so he would know what she looked like and he could bring her on Christmas. Clara? Further conversation revealed June had changed Lila’s name. (There was an abridged Nutcracker book at YaYa’s house Thanksgiving weekend, which I assume is where June got the name.) Santa wouldn’t be in his house until after lunch, and we were leaving after lunch, we told her, but we were pretty sure he knew about Clara already. Didn’t he already know what Noah wanted?

While the kids and I were at the beach, Beth went back to Browse About and bought Clara.

Over the River and Through the Woods…

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Steph

We pulled out of the driveway at 9:04 on Thanksgiving morning and at 9:05 Noah declared, “I’m bored.” I knew then it was going to be a long drive. Beth had agreed to a pit stop at Starbucks if we made it out of the door by 9:00 and apparently she forgave us the four minutes because she drove straight to the nearest one, where I picked up a hazelnut latte for myself, marble pound cake for Noah and vanilla mini-scones for June. We probably would have been on time if Noah hadn’t wanted to dash back into the house for his copy of Car and Driver. (He’s going through a car phase.)

The trip started off quietly enough. Noah read his magazine and June was engrossed in an episode of Busytown Mysteries (http://www.busytownmysteries.com/), which she was watching on Beth’s phone. She was listening to the audio with headphones, which kept slipping down off her ears. Noah helped her re-position them several times until we decided it was too much hassle and decided to disconnect them. This was when the trouble really started. Noah had initially objected to June using the headphones because he wanted to watch, too, but he wasn’t too insistent about it. Once he could hear, however, he wanted to see and June was holding the phone at an angle that made this difficult. Soon Noah was crying and trying to grab the phone and June was yelling at him and twisting in her seat to keep it away from him. I tried to referee from the front seat but I was entirely without success.

Beth pulled off the highway into a long wooded driveway with a sign that read Saint Mark. It was a strangely peaceful spot, so close to the Beltway. The church was set back from the road, tucked into the woods. There was a cluster of buildings, but the one in front of us was round with a tall, conical roof reaching up into the treetops. It looked like something from a fairy tale (http://www.saintmarkpresby.org/).

The inside of the car was not so peaceful, however. The kids were both still screaming. Beth parked the car, got out and opened Noah’s door. I was curious to see what she would do. She asked Noah to stop crying so he could listen to her. It took a few moments, but he did. She suggested he move from the right hand seat to the middle one so he could see. June would still hold the phone because it was her turn and he might not be able to see perfectly, but he could see the screen better. Would that be okay? Noah sniffled and said yes. Feeling any gain on Noah’s part must by necessity be a loss on hers, June howled more loudly. “But I don’t want him to see!” she wailed. Beth unbuckled her and suggested they go for a walk to see the funny-shaped building up close and off they went.

While they were gone I got out of the car and stood by the open door. I started to talk to Noah about The Responsibilities of the Older Child, which include, but are not limited to, acting more reasonably than a three year old. I made note of the small space of the car’s interior, the long duration of the drive ahead (we were only as far as Rockville by this point) and the fact that Beth had a terrible headache. (She had been struck on the head by a falling branch while walking through the yard to pack the car that very morning. It was a small branch, a stick really, but it had fallen from a great height and her head hurt her all day.) Noah barely responded. I got a few grunts that might have been interpreted as assent, if one were in an optimistic frame of mind.

Beth and June returned. June had been promised cookies and was on board with the plan to let Noah watch her show. We drove out of the church parking lot at 9:45. The kids watched another half hour of Busytown Mysteries in relative peace. When it was Noah’s turn to pick the entertainment he started searching the phone for the audio books they’d downloaded for him, but something had gone wrong and they weren’t there. Then he checked for leftover television episodes from other trips—deleted. Surprisingly, Noah took this turn of events with equanimity and just asked us to put in a CD (a new mix he’d made using Genius on iTunes). I wondered—had he actually taken my lecture to heart? Maybe, but who knows? He’s like that—easily riled at times, gracious and easy-going at others. Maybe he’d gotten all the upset out his system earlier.

While the CD played, around 10:35, Noah said, “This isn’t what I think of when I think of Thanksgiving.”

“What do you think of?” I asked. I had to repeat myself a few times to get a response.

“Eating a lot of food, not driving,” he said.

Then about a half hour later, he proposed a game. Could we pretend we were poor and we’d spent all our money on a car and now we needed to find someone to take us in? We agreed.

“It’s too bad we spent all our money on a car,” Noah said.

“That was foolish,” Beth commented.

“Maybe we’ll find someone to take us in,” Noah said.

“I hear they’re hospitable in West Virginia,” I added. “Let’s drive there. Maybe we’ll find a nice widow woman.”

Throughout the rest of the day, every now and then Noah speculated about whether this would be a good town to stop and look for hosts, but we always decided to drive on.

Around 11:30, June started crying and complaining of a stomachache. Ever since her first bout of carsickness last summer, June’s been worried about throwing up in the car. It was her first long car trip since then, so I was worried, too. I’d packed two spare outfits in the diaper bag, just in case. Beth pulled off the highway onto a country road. She parked in front of what seemed to be an empty farmhouse and I took June outside for some fresh air. She slumped against me at first, whimpering. We sat on some stone steps and she snuggled into me. I could feel her stomach gurgling ominously under her dress as I rubbed it. Within just a few minutes, though, she perked up and was running around, using a low, stone wall as a balance beam while I held her hand. I was wearing a turtleneck and a heavy sweater and I was getting cold and she was wearing only a cotton dress and leggings so I asked her if she wanted her coat. She did not. Noah came out of the car and wanted to peek into the windows of the house, but Beth called him back. It looked run-down but it wasn’t entirely clear it was vacant. We all piled back into the car and began to look for somewhere to get gas, use the restrooms and eat our lunch.

After we gassed up, we stopped at a scenic overlook. The idea was to take in the view of the valley below and eat in the car, but the kids wanted back outside. We were at a higher elevation now and the air was chilly and damp, not inviting picnic weather. Beth announced her intention to stay in the car. I said I’d take the kids up to the picnic area. After a brief debate with June on the topic “Does June need a coat?” (Steph: pro; June: con), we walked over the tables with our arms laden with yogurt, oranges, baba ganoush, hummus, pita chips and juice. June ate almost nothing, but found some wooden beams sunk into the ground to balance on. Noah and I ate and looked at the view. Everyone was happy.

We got back to the car around 1:00. It was naptime, so I gave June the pacifier she’d been wanting since 10:30 or so. (She only has them at nap and nighttime now but she’s not happy about it.) We drove off. Noah kept singing and humming loudly. We kept shushing him, reminding him that June was trying to sleep. June paid him no mind. She sucked contentedly on the pacifier, curled up with “Baby Bush” (that’s Bush Baby to you and me) and fell asleep. June’s still a devoted napper, unlike many of her classmates who have stopped napping, but car naps have gotten dicey for her. I was thinking she might sleep only a half hour or forty-five minutes, but she slept an hour and ten minutes and during a rare spell of quiet from Noah, I dozed for fifteen or twenty minutes myself.

She woke at 2:25 and we drove for another hour. As we approached Wheeling, speculation about where we might find some kind soul to feed us and put us up for the night intensified. We pulled into the parking lot of YaYa’s condominium around 3:30. Beth said she thought it looked like a good place. She parked the car and we got out. I heard a tapping sound and looked up. There was a kindly woman looking out the guest bedroom window and knocking on the pane.

She took us in; she laid a feast before us; she sheltered us for three days. During this time we visited with her sisters, took a walk in a snow squall and watched the swirling flakes melt in the creek, and beheld the elaborate Christmas decorations at the mansion and the lodge in Oglebay Park and drove through the Festival of Lights display there (http://www.oglebay-resort.com/). We also visited with Beth’s father at his house.

And then we drove back home. There was less fighting on this trip, worse traffic and more stops because June realized she had it in her power to stop the car by announcing she felt sick or needed to use the potty. Because she probably was sick some of these times, we usually did stop. The potty trips were more suspect, as she has used the potty exactly once since last spring, but we went through the motions there, too. We left Wheeling at eleven and were home by 6:30. We dove into dinner preparation, unpacking, baths for the kids and then we all sank into bed, happy to have gone and happy to be back home.

When We Were Down Beside the Sea

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Steph

There were probably more reasons not to go to the Outer Banks this week than to go. It’s a long drive, Beth is swamped at work and there’s a nursery school board meeting tonight, plus there’s an Open House at Noah’s school on Friday and Sasha’s having an end-of-summer-vacation pool party immediately afterward, not to mention Hurricane Bill had the potential to make driving treacherous. But my mother and stepfather had rented a house and invited us. I’ve been going down to Avon with them since I was eighteen years old. At first we went every year but in recent years it’s been more like every two or three years. The last time we went Noah was five and June was five months. And since I would find turning down an invitation to the beach roughly akin to chewing off one of my own limbs, we went. These were Beth’s terms: We’d come back Wednesday so she could attend the meeting and we could all go to the Open House and pool party and it would be a working vacation for her. The ratio of three beach days to two driving days was not ideal, but it was something. I said okay, probably more grudgingly than I should have.

“Beth must love you a lot,” my mom said as we were discussing her plans to spend two days driving and then most of the rest of her time at the computer. I think she does.

Day 1
We got a later start than we intended on Saturday morning because ten minutes into the drive I realized we’d left the diaper bag at home and we went back for it. (That would have been a convenient time to remember we’d left Noah’s suitcase in his room but we didn’t make that discovery until bedtime.) We arrived just before six, after a nine hour, fifteen minute drive that featured rain, intermittent traffic jams, June’s first-ever bout of carsickness and a half hour of screaming over video choices. Guess who screamed for a half hour? Hint: it wasn’t me or Beth or June. Beth went right back out to pick up enough groceries for dinner and the next morning’s breakfast, despite the fact that it looked like it was going to storm and she was feeling jittery from the stress of the drive.

Just before we put the kids to bed, I slipped down to the beach. Bill had stirred up the sea, creating waves that looked massive from the deck. I had to see it up close. When I got to the beach I saw the outer edge of the extensive dune system had been washed away, leaving tufts of sea oats stranded in what looked like the middle of the beach. Of course, the beach was a lot narrower than usual because the water was up so high. When I got close to the water I could see that what had looked like enormous waves from a distance was really a series of merely large waves, one on top of the other. There were waves close in and waves far out and waves every place in between with no breaks at all. The National Weather Service had issued a warning not to swim Saturday and Sunday and I saw why. It looked impossible.

Day 2
Sunday morning it was raining, but June, stalwart girl she is, was eager to go to the beach with me. While Beth and Noah went shopping for clothes for him, we made dribble castles in the rain, collected shells (June favored the white and purple ones, which she later presented to Grandmom and I found a sand dollar) and we compared the relative size of our footprints (conclusion: mine are bigger). We observed how quickly the water rushed up in the holes June dug with her little shovel in the waterlogged sand and I recited the following Robert Louis Stevenson poem:

When I was down beside the sea
A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.

My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.

http://www.bartleby.com/188/104.html

She looked at me thoughtfully, as if surprised I knew the perfect poem for the occasion. “Say it again,” she said, and I did. On the way back to the house we saw a group of five pelicans fly over our heads.

That afternoon, the skies cleared and I took June down to the beach again with Mom and Jim. Beth and Noah were out shopping again. It turns out boys’ underwear is very difficult to find on the Outer Banks and they drove all the way up to the GAP outlet in Nag’s Head, an hour’s drive each way, to buy him some. At least they got to make a stop at Bodie Island Lighthouse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodie_Island_Light), which he wanted to see. He was really good-natured about spending so much of his day driving and trying on clothes, better than I would have been in his place.

I didn’t stay at the beach long because I was cooking corn chowder for dinner. I’d picked that evening to cook because the no-swim warning was still in effect. Shortly before I went back to the house, Beth brought a newly outfitted Noah down to the beach and we admired his new shark t-shirt and Hawaiian print swim trunks.

Day 3
Monday I squeezed in as much beach time as I could, making four trips down to the water. On the first trip the kids made sand castle after sand castle and June lost her sunglasses. This is how it happened: The three of us were standing in the surf and Noah said he didn’t think she should be wearing them in the water because she could lose them. I don’t know why she chose this moment to listen to him, but she removed her sunglasses and promptly dropped them into the ocean. The water was shallow but foamy and flowing rapidly back and forth and as soon as they went under, they disappeared. I tried to make a grab for them, but I couldn’t see where to grab. Realizing what had happened, June burst into tears. Feeling responsible perhaps, Noah did, too. I tried to calm them both, telling Noah it wasn’t his fault over and over. Before I could tell June we’d buy her a new pair of sunglasses she stopped crying abruptly and before her brother did. “Can I get Dora sunglasses?” she wanted to know.

The kids wanted to return to the house soon after that, even though it wasn’t close to lunch time yet, so I hustled them back, showered and dressed them, foisted them off on my mother, and went back to the beach for my first swim of the trip. The water was still very rough, but the waves were spaced out so I thought I could manage. Even so, it was a difficult swim. It took a lot of patience and effort to get past the breakers to my favorite place, where the waves are swelling and just starting to curve. I did it, but after only a few waves I got pulled back into the rough surf and I decided to call it quits. (I grow old… I grow old…. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled– http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html.) I returned to the house, had lunch, napped with June and then Beth took a break from her work to take us all to Dairy Queen and to go sunglass shopping for June.

The swimming was better that afternoon. In fact it was the best swimming I’ve had in years. It was close to low tide and the waves were very big, but gentler now. I faced them and jumped up into them right before they broke and they sucked me up their slopes and dropped me down. On the way down, I fell through the air for several seconds before I hit the water, laughing out loud. After I tired, I placed myself just to the side of where the big waves were breaking and I stood sideways, watching the late afternoon sunlight paint their swelling surfaces silver and gold.

I returned to the beach that night after the kids were in bed. With no boardwalk lights, the beach in Avon is darker at night that Rehoboth Beach, but the darkness lets you see more clearly what light there is—the stars sprinkled across the sky with the Big Dipper in the West, the tiny phosphorescent creatures twinkling in the wet sand and in the shallow water, the lights of the fishing pier, the bonfires crackling on the beach, the beams of light from flashlights held by kids tearing around the beach looking for the crabs that come out of their holes at night. As I walked along the water’s edge, looking at the stars, I felt a rare awareness that I was walking on the surface of a planet among many other planets, at the edge of a continent among many other continents. It didn’t make me feel small. It made me feel grounded.

Day 4
Tuesday morning Noah and I went out to breakfast, just the two of us. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I had an Avon tradition of slipping away one morning before anyone was up and having breakfast alone at the Froggy Dog (http://www.froggydog.com/). I’d always get the same special: two fried eggs over easy with grits and a biscuit. After I’d eaten I’d linger at the table, drinking my coffee and reading or writing and then I’d leave the waitress a big tip for monopolizing the table. The first time Beth came with me to spend a week with my folks at the beach, the summer after I graduated from college, I took her. I still go every year we’re there with different combinations of people, but I don’t read or write at the table any more. I chose to take Noah this year because although I am frequently alone with June, he and I don’t have much one on one time.

It was a fun meal. We talked about the upcoming school year and whether he’d prefer Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon or the other way around (English in the morning he said, so he could ease into his day). We tried to decide whether the art on the wall was a painting of two unicorns walking in the surf or a doctored photograph of horses. (Painting he said, but I thought it might be a photograph.) He bounced in his seat along with the music, a mix of 70s and 80s pop. I wondered if I would need to explain what a “macho, macho man” was while the Village People tune played (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Macho-Man-lyrics-Village-People/B4F3065622CA393F48256DF20009B350), but he didn’t ask. When he needed help cutting his pancakes and spreading strawberry and blackberry jam on them, I thought about how delayed he is in self-help skills, partly due to his sensory issues and his ensuing lack of co-ordination but also because he’s in his comfort zone having us do this kind of thing for him and doesn’t often want to try to do it himself. Usually Beth helps him while I’m helping June so I don’t reflect on it much.

We walked back to the house, picked up June and we all went to the beach. I was sitting on the wet sand with June on my lap, when Noah came over and asked me a question (he wanted to know if my watch was waterproof and if I should be wearing it so close to the water). I turned to look at him and missed a big wave. June got knocked right off my lap and ended up about a foot behind me. I grabbed her out of the water. This happens to her a lot– she’s so little and the waves are so big. In fact, just the day before when I was back at the house cooking dinner, my mom was sitting in a beach chair near the water with June on her lap when a wave went right over both of them. That time she wanted to go back up to the house, but this time, she shook it off pretty easily.

After lunch, a nap and another trip for ice cream, I took both kids to the beach with Mom and Jim. I had a swim, very nice but not as glorious as the day before. Then I waded back into the shallow water and played with the kids. This time it was Noah’s turn to get knocked over. He was going in even deeper than he had in Rehoboth and jumping around in the waves. When they knocked him over he would just laugh, as long as he kept his head above water. His face went underwater once, and he came up with all his hair wet and slicked down except a dry stripe sticking up on the very top of his head, like a Mohawk. He was serious and subdued for a few minutes, but he regained his good humor quickly.

The kids moved up the beach to where Pop was sitting. They built dribble castles (together and separately) while I sat and watched the ocean. Too soon it was time to go back to the house for dinner. Noah was cold and he needed to use the bathroom, but none of us wanted to leave. Noah wanted to go deep into the surf and let three waves crash into him before we left. Then I rushed into the water and dove under one last wave, not knowing if I’d get to swim again before we left the next morning. Then as I turned to go, I heard another one forming behind me and I dove under that one, too. When I finally got out of the water and started rinsing off the sand toys, June wanted to press the pelican mold into the sand one last time.

That night my mom made peach crumble (using as topping the crumbs of the oatmeal scotchies I’d brought from home, which had gotten crushed in the car). We ate it on the deck after dinner, watching the ocean on one side of the house and the setting sun and rising moon on the other.

Day 5
We did make it back to the beach this morning for a little playing and swimming time before we piled into the car and drove back to work and meetings and a new school year. When Beth told June it was time to leave beach and go home, she doubled over and cried. “She’s your inner child,” Beth commented. Beth and Noah went on ahead to start their showers as I tried to drag June off the beach. She lagged far behind me as I called her over and over.

Our holes were empty like a cup. In every hole the sea came up, till it could come no more.

The First Week in August: A Week in Pictures

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Steph

I was sick and tired and in the grip of a melancholy I didn’t fully understand this week so I wasn’t up for detailed blogging. You are getting the condensed version of the rest of our week at Oglebay. I’ll throw in some extra pictures to make it up to you.

As predicted, we rode the paddle boats (three times), visited the playground (countless times), played miniature golf (twice), swam several times, roasted marshmallows in the fireplace and picked blueberries at a nearby Ohio farm. We also went to Idlewild amusement park (http://www.idlewild.com/), which was on the agenda all along, but I’d forgotten. The bubble rocket saw some more action and we saw more deer (many, many more deer, much to the delight of all four kids). I was unable to convince my kids to go on a nature hike with me, so I slipped away yesterday and took a walk in the flower and herb gardens of the park mansion.

We had Chinese takeout with Beth’s dad one night and her mom accompanied us on many of our adventures. The kids had two sleepovers at her house. On Tuesday night Noah stayed with her and on Thursday night both kids did. It was June’s very first night away from us and she did great! At first YaYa suggested one night alone with each kid, but June was alarmed by this plan and asked for Noah to come along, so he did. An added bonus was we had an easier time packing up the cabin on Thursday night and checking out this morning. Today we’re hanging out at YaYa’s house. Tomorrow we’ll drive back home, to weekend chores and work and a business trip for Beth and robot camp for Noah and whatever else the second week of August holds.