Sunday
“I’m sorry,” Beth said. We were embracing on the screened porch of our rental house early Sunday morning. “You have no idea how much.”

She had driven us to the beach the day before and she was heading straight back home. The Verizon strike that had started a week prior and caused her to work long hours and late nights ever since meant she had to skip our vacation. YaYa had elected not to come this year and my sister cancelled when she found out right before the trip that her cat had inoperable cancer so it was just me and Mom and the kids.

Now it would be unseemly to complain too much about a week at the beach with a grandmother to help, but it was still a sharp disappointment to find out within a few days of each other and right beforehand, that neither my partner nor my sister was coming. And to make matters worse, rain was predicted all week, after a very dry summer.

But the beach is the beach, rain or shine, and I was glad to be there. The kids and I had already made the best of a week without seeing much of Beth. We’d gone for a long creek walk, been to the pool, made chocolate-marshmallow candies from a kit, hosted two play dates and been to two drum lessons. We’d make the best of this week, too.

Beth drove away at 8:45, after taking June to play on the beach for a little while Noah and I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on the screened porch. I watched the car go with a pang and kept on reading.

Later Mom and I worked out a set of menus and a grocery list. Both kids wanted to go shopping with her so I hit the beach. It was cloudy but not uniformly so. There were thick bands of dark clouds in the West but in the East there was just about every kind of sky you could imagine: patches of blue, puffy white clouds and big rapidly moving dark gray ones, scuttling in front of the lighter ones. I thought my swim could be cut short by a thunderstorm so I got in the water right away. I swam for an hour, until my fingers were wrinkly and I was all over gooseflesh.

I got home shortly before Mom and the kids, helped unpack the groceries and made lunch. Then June and I, who had been up for an hour and a half in the middle of the night because she could not sleep in an unfamiliar place, collapsed and slept for two hours. Every now and then I half-woke to hear Noah laughing as he and Grandmom played Roundabouts, but it was a pretty solid nap.

Afterward, I was energized enough to take the kids to Funland. Noah tried some new rides this year—the Freefall (which is one of those tower-like rides with seats that just take you up and drop you) and the Paratrooper (which looks like a Ferris Wheel except it tilts in addition to spinning). June stuck to her old standbys, but insisted on going on the mini-Ferris wheel alone, not with Noah and definitely not with me. She wanted to ride the Freefall, and she is tall enough, but I wasn’t quite ready to put her on it, and I also didn’t want to take away from Noah’s pride at riding it for the first time by having his little sister do it the very same year, so I told her next year. She’s the daredevil, if you hadn’t figured it out already, and he’s the cautious one.

It had started to rain hard while we were in Funland and it didn’t look like it was going to stop any time soon so we walked home in it. Even with umbrellas and June in a rain jacket we got soaked so when we got home Mom and the kids changed into pajamas and called it a pajama party. Noah even found the song “Pajama Time” on his iPod and played it while we cooked dinner.

After dinner it had cleared and the kids wanted to go to Candy Kitchen so I took them to the boardwalk in their pajamas (Noah pulled on a pair of shorts over his pajama bottoms). Before we were halfway there it started to rain again but the sun was still shining so we saw possibly the most amazing rainbow I have ever seen. It was huge, 180 degrees, right over the ocean. Everyone was taking pictures and I tried to take one with my phone but I couldn’t get the whole thing in the frame. Beth called while we were looking at it. It was hard to talk much because of the noise of the rain and the crowds, but she sounded sad.

We got fudge and a wide variety of gummy products (worms, frogs and teeth). On the way home it started to rain harder and we got soaked again. June needed a second pair of pajamas. We played Hex and checkers until bedtime and our first full day at the beach was over.

Monday
I’d wondered if my long nap would keep me up but I went right to sleep Sunday night and slept eight and a half hours, waking before June who slept until 7:25. The kids were sleeping upstairs in the attic bedroom and I was in a downstairs bedroom and I slept magnificently. The room was dark and quiet. I was not able to hear all their little sleep movements as I do when they are just next door to me at home. The kids and I played a hand of Go Fish after breakfast and were on the beach by 9:10.

We proceeded to spend the longest chunk of time I think I’ve ever had on the beach with both kids—over three hours. I was the one who had to make them come home for lunch. They were in the water before I could even get sun block on them and I had to call them back to the towel. They jumped in the waves, made dribble castles and regular castles and dug a very deep moat around one of them. We watched a large pod of dolphins (the first of many we’d see that week). Noah buried his legs in the sand down to the knees and seemed to enjoy sitting and watching the ocean thus weighted down. June played in the water until she was shivering and her lips were blue. And even then she resisted coming up onto the sand for warming-up breaks. I snuck in a five-minute swim while they were building things in the sand, but I came out in a hurry when I saw them approach the water. The waves were better than the day before so I was sorry not to have a real swim, but it was a fun morning nonetheless. I think I could have even read or written a little if I had brought a book or writing supplies because they played independently for long stretches of time. It’s been a long time—a decade—since I’ve been able to read on the beach without getting someone to watch the kids. It was tantalizing to think it might be almost within my grasp again.

That afternoon, post-nap (June’s—I read to Noah while she slept as I did most days that week) we returned to Funland. Noah got bored quickly because his new favorite rides are not under the roof and kept getting shut down by the intermittent rain. He did get to ride the Freefall once more but he got drenched because it started to rain during the ride. June wanted to ride the helicopters, which are also outside and she waited in the line twice, only to have them shut down when she would have been in the next group. So we mostly stuck to the kiddie rides under the pavilion. Once again, we walked home in the rain and the kids ate dinner in their pajamas. We considered going to the boardwalk that evening but we decided to stay inside and dry. We talked to Beth on the phone, Noah played games on his iPod and read a 39 Clues book (http://www.the39clues.com/). Meanwhile June showed off her new mouse skills for Mom, playing phonics games on the Between the Lions web site. June went to bed at 8:45 and Noah at 9:15, but they were up talking until 9:45.

Tuesday
June slept in until 6:55 and when she woke me I saw my first glimpses of sun since we’d arrived. After two consecutive nights’ good sleep I was ambitious enough to make veggie bacon, eggs, toast and cantaloupe for my breakfast and June’s (Noah opted for cereal).

After the breakfast dishes were done and I’d started a load of laundry, I took the kids for a scooter ride on the boardwalk. Scooters are permitted on the boardwalk before 10 a.m. in the summer, or so I thought. Once we were on the boardwalk, I noticed the sign that said bikes are permitted before 10 a.m. but scooters are prohibited from May 15 to September 15. Why the distinction, I have no idea, but we turned off the boardwalk at Rehoboth Avenue (not before passing a police officer, but she didn’t seem to care about our lawless ways). We fortified ourselves with raspberry latte, chocolate milk, juice and a bagel with cream cheese (for June who was already in need of a second breakfast) before returning home via a non-boardwalk route, as much as that pained me.

At home June wanted to stay behind and act out medical dramas with Grandmom while Noah and I went to the beach. On the way I told him, “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I always enjoy your company,’ I said.

“You do?”

“I do.”

“I thought so,” he said cheerfully.

We waded into the water together but the waves were breaking too close to shore so it was too rough at the depth where he’d normally play, plus the water was full of swirling sand and tiny pebbles so that the waves were really kind of unpleasant. I tried to coax him deeper into the water where the waves would be gentler and less gritty, but he wouldn’t come. So he went back to the shore to pile wet sand on his legs again while I swam. The waves were unsatisfying, so I floated on my back, feeling the coolness of the water around me and the warmth of the sun on my face. With my ears underwater the shouts of nearby swimmers were softer and the soothing sounds of the waves were more audible.

After fifteen minutes or so, I joined Noah on the sand and helped him bury the parts of his legs he couldn’t reach. Every so often the water rushed over him and washed away our work. Rebuilding it was a pleasant, mindless sort of task. A few times I asked him if he was comfortable—did he have too much sand in his suit, was the sand too heavy on his legs where it had eroded away under his calf and left it unsupported? He answered he was fine. We did this until it was time for lunch.

After lunch we read Harry Potter on the porch while June napped and we watched as for the second day in a row Mom set out for the beach around three, only to come right back because it had started to rain. When June woke, we returned to Funland for the third time in three days, where we met up with the Ground Beetle and her family (which we’d planned—I knew they were staying in nearby Lewes) and with the Field Mouse and his family (which was a happy accident). The Beetle and the Mouse have younger brothers so at one point there were five Purple School students or alumni riding in a row on the motorcycles. June and the Beetle were so happy to see each other they did not stop talking the entire time they were together. When they rode the carousel, they named their horses. The Beetle presented June with a small seashell with June’s name written on it in marker. The Beetle has been moving steadily up the wait list for the Spanish immersion program at June’s elementary school. Her parents are hoping she will get in sometime this school year. We do, too.

Noah had originally decided against another trip to Funland but he changed his mind so Mom brought him. He was rewarded with clear skies and working rides. He rode the Freefall twice and the Paratroopers once.

After Funland we went out to dinner. We intended to go out for Mexican but there was a 35-45 minute wait so we went looking for other options and ended up at a café where we ate crepes (me and Noah), grilled cheese (June) and fajitas (Mom). I tried to call the Mexican place to cancel our table, but the #7 on my phone was malfunctioning and there was a 7 in the number so I couldn’t call. We had some downtime waiting for our food so we called Beth. Noah had the brilliant idea of having her call the restaurant to cancel our seating. Dinner was followed by frozen custard for the womenfolk and a chocolate-dipped frozen banana for Noah. We at them on the beach while admiring the sunset. June and I waded too deep into the water (at her continual urging to go “a little deeper”). On the way home, June, in a sleeveless dress, sopping wet to the waist and having just eaten a frozen custard, was freezing. (It had been not just rainy but cool all week.) We hurried the kids home and off to bed and our beach week was half over.

Wednesday
Wednesday was another sunny morning and I had good news in my email. Beth, who had been planning to drive out on Friday evening, now thought she might be able to come Thursday night instead. This was exciting news.

Mom took the kids to Jungle Jim’s water park (http://www.funatjunglejims.com/) and I had a few hours of long-awaited alone time. Thanks, Mom! I puttered around the house a bit, finishing the breakfast dishes and then set off on some errands. We needed sun block and while I was along a commercial stretch I ended buying a caramel latte and a secret stash of chocolate crabs for myself and a t-shirt for June. I was drawn to it right away when I saw it in the store window. It’s pink with a skull-and-crossbones wearing a heart-shaped eye patch and a bow on top of the skull. It says “Pirate Girl.”

Next it was time for the beach. I decided to stay near the food establishments on the boardwalk so I could have lunch. It was more crowded than our regular stretch of beach, but I found a place for my towel. I swam and read a few chapters of the Agatha Christie novel I started at Chadd’s Ford (and hadn’t picked up since then). I watched dolphins and swam again. Around 12:45, I went up to the boardwalk and stood in an extremely slow-moving line for fried clams for ten minutes before giving up and getting fries elsewhere. Then I headed back to the house, where Mom and the kids had just returned. Mom said the kids liked the river ride best and did it six or seven times. June went with Mom first and then alone. This was not exactly on purpose as they got separated. June found this a very satisfactory outcome, but Mom was more than a little scared by the experience.

June’s nap started later than usual so I had to wake her around 3:40. Mom was at the beach for the first time and we were supposed to meet her there but neither of the kids felt like going so I decided to get a jump on dinner. I made a pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes, garlic, Portobello mushrooms, basil (from our garden), and black olives. Then I told June she had to go to the beach (we left Noah to practice his drums and read) and we left.

Once we were there, June made a beeline for the water and was soon jumping up and down in the water yelling, “I love the beach! I love the beach!” After fifteen minutes the lifeguard blew the five o’ clock whistle, meaning everyone had to get out of the water while they go off duty. On our way out of the water, June and I spied an enormous sand sculpture of a lobster we’d somehow missed on our way into the water. She went right to work building her own miniature replica while I went back into the water. The waves were not big (there were no big waves all week, alas) but they were rolling in a pleasant rhythm out beyond the breakers so I stayed there. As I bobbed in the water, I could see Mom in her chair and June huddled over her sand creation and the big lobster and a big sand castle that ascended in a spiral pattern and the iconic orange Dolles sign far down the boardwalk. I had to wrench myself away to go home for dinner.

I wanted to finish dinner in time for another boardwalk jaunt because Noah had decided early in the week that this was the year he was going to try to Haunted Mansion and we hadn’t yet been to Funland in the evening when it’s open. As it happened, we didn’t get there until 7:15, which was later than I’d hoped (though we had a nice walk, seeing both a rabbit and more dolphins). By 7:20 I’d purchased tickets and Noah and I were in line. My original plan was to take a test ride by myself because Noah had a really bad experience in a haunted house when he was seven (see my 11/05/08 post) but when I saw the line, I knew we’d have to take the plunge together. Based on the ages of the kids in line (many younger than Noah and a few not much older than June) I thought it would be fine. And it was. Noah was keyed up throughout the entire forty-minute wait, but in a happy way. He kept noting our progress through the line and pointing our details on the exterior (a vulture I’d missed, a severed arm over the sign that says to keep your arms in the car) and when were seated, he said, “We’re really going in the Haunted Mansion!”

It was quite tame. There were a great many skeletons popping out at you—the one that came out of the picture frame actually startled me—Frankenstein’s monster, and some big spiders, but no gore. I kept my hand resting lightly on his thigh, but he never took it. Afterward he said it was “nice,” which I thought was a funny description of a haunted house, but it was nice, scary enough to make him feel brave, but not traumatized, which is after all what we want from scary things.

We tried to call Beth from the boardwalk so he could tell her all about it but now my phone was inserting random 7s into any number I tried to dial, so I had to write her an email about it when we got home.

Thursday
Thursday morning I took the kids for a walk on the boardwalk and down Rehoboth Avenue to get Noah his annual t-shirt from the T-shirt Factory. I knew it would take him a long time to select a shirt and a design to have applied to it, given the sheer number of choices, so to keep June occupied (and because we’d left her backpack full of toys at home) I let her pick one toy. I thought she’d go for the set of four plastic mermaids with different colored hair (pink, purple, red and blue) and a tiny brush and comb, but she picked a fuchsia and white striped stuffed rodent of an undetermined species. (June thought it was a squirrel.) She named it Fruity. Finally Noah selected a design of two bare footprints and the words, “Rehoboth Beach, Delaware” and had them applied to a white t-shirt. We celebrated a successful shopping trip with a café con leche, two chocolate milks, a muffin and a bagel at Café a GoGo, where the coffee is heavenly but where I normally won’t even take the kids because we have gotten too many dark looks from the stern Mexican owner when they’ve been too boisterous. But they had been well behaved all week so I chanced it. They sat down immediately, gave me their orders and wouldn’t even come to the counter to look at the pastries because they were a bit intimidated by previous experience.

We went home, got changed and headed to the beach. After playing in the water, we built a pool for June that filled with water whenever a big wave rolled up on the shore. I decorated the back wall with dribble castles. It was quite an elaborate production.

After nap and Harry Potter, I made a tostada filling out of zucchini, yellow squash and tomatoes for dinner and we all joined Mom at the beach. It was the first time all four of us had been down there at the same time. The kids and I played in the water until June decided she wanted to look for crabs, shells and pebbles with Grandmom. They found no crabs and not a whole lot of shells but a lot of pretty pebbles, which June collected in a pail to decorate her sandbox at home. Noah was befriended by a younger boy who attached himself to him. I couldn’t tell if Noah wanted the attention or not. He seemed a bit puzzled as to why the boy was talking to him at first but then he relaxed and they played in the waves together. With both kids occupied I was free to take a brief swim. Coming out of the water, I noticed another sand sculpture, this one a swordfish.

We went home, had dinner and then went out for ice cream. On the way we stopped at a shop on the boardwalk that sold the same mermaid set June saw in the t-shirt shop. She’d had buyers’ remorse about the stuffed animal because she “really, really” wanted the mermaids now. I suggested she use her own money. June’s been getting an allowance since she turned five in March but she had yet to spend any of it. I don’t think she realized she could. And I still don’t think she gets it because even after I purchased the mermaids, saying she could pay me back at home, she kept asking why I got them when I said she could only have one toy.

On the way home we walked on the beach. We admired elaborate sand castles and the kids jumped into a big pit someone had dug and climbed on the lifeguards’ chair. Noah leapt off it and after some consideration, June did too. It was a big jump for her and she was pleased with herself.

We got home to an email from Beth saying she was on her way, so I stayed up late (for me), talking to Mom and waiting for Beth. She arrived just before eleven and we had a lot of catching up to do so we’d only just fallen asleep around midnight when there was a thump from the other side of the big attic bedroom. We thought it was June because she’d been sleeping horizontally across the bed with her legs hanging over the side, but it was Noah. I found him sitting on the floor, so disoriented he didn’t know what to do so I helped him back into bed. In the morning he had no memory of this.

Friday
At one a.m. I gave up trying to sleep in the upstairs double bed with Beth (we’re used to sleeping in a queen) and went downstairs to my bedroom. I heard movement upstairs at 6:30 and by 7:00, the kids were piled in bed with Beth and I was sitting on the edge of the bed as Beth combed mermaid hair and we planned out our last full day at the beach. She’d work in the morning, and in the afternoon, we’d make a final trip to Funland (where the kids would use up the last of the 88 tickets we bought over the course of the week and Noah would ride the Freefall with Beth watching) and we’d have pizza at Grotto’s. Beth couldn’t stop smiling at us. It was good to have her back. She’s the one that I want with me, rain or shine.

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.

A blogging friend of mine has a saying, “Good for life, bad for blog,” meaning that turmoil can be more interesting to read about than simple happiness. This is certainly part of the appeal of the Series of Unfortunate Events books Noah and I are reading this summer. The children are orphaned in the first chapter of the first book and pursued throughout the series by the evil Count Olaf, who wants to steal their fortune. It gets considerably more complicated than that later in the series, but we’re just finishing up Book 4 now.

We spent this past week at Rehoboth Beach with my mom, Beth’s mom and her Aunt Carole and there really weren’t very many unfortunate events. No life-threatening emergencies back home like last year (see my 8/14/08 post), not even a string of cold, rainy days like the year before (see 8/25/07). No one even got a sunburn. I’ve got a nice tan and June has a cute new spray of freckles on her nose. We celebrated an anniversary and a birthday. Of course, there was some occasional misbehavior on the kids’ part (they’re not angels) and I didn’t get much reading done (long uninterrupted reading was one of the joys of a beach week for me pre-kids) and there was one night of really poor sleep, but overall it was pretty much unrelieved happiness. If this sounds too tedious to bear, feel free to look at the pictures and skip the rest. I’ll understand.

Saturday: Day 1

“Do you want to go down to the beach, June?” I asked.

“Beach! Beach! Beach!” June shouted, wriggling with happiness. It had been a long, trying day for her. We’d promised the beach, but we’d been packing all morning and driving all afternoon, with no beach to show for it so far.

The walk down to the beach from the rental house was longer than I remembered and June needed to stop and pick up gravel from every driveway we passed, so it took us over twenty minutes to get to the water. To return home by six, as I’d promised, we would have needed to turn around and go straight back. Of course, we didn’t. We built sand castles, which June gleefully stomped, pressed the green plastic duck mold into the wet sand to make “a duck and its friends” and stood by the water’s edge with the waves running over our feet. We were just barely getting them wet because June was unsure about the waves. I was thinking we should really get going when she said, “Let’s go in!” meaning let’s wade further in. We did, but I told her it was almost time to go and then there was crying, (And no, it wasn’t me.) She recovered quickly and as we walked up the long sandy path through the dunes and the scrub pines she said, “I want to come back tomorrow and the next day and the next day.” It was a quote from a library book we have out (Caillou at the Beach), but I think the sentiment was heartfelt.

Sunday: Day 2

The next morning June was begging to “go for a walk on the board.” I suspected she had an ulterior motive so I asked her if she wanted to go to Candy Kitchen. She did. We were staying a couple blocks north of the boardwalk and Candy Kitchen is right at its center so it would be an even longer walk than the day before. I decided to take the stroller. Noah was still in the new leaf pajamas YaYa made for him, alternately working on a page from his summer math packet and chatting with YaYa and Aunt Carole. He didn’t want to leave the house, so June and I set out alone again, as we would many times over the course of the week. It was a long walk but we were rewarded with a shell-shaped lollipop for June, watermelon taffy for me, and chocolate-peanut butter fudge for the house. Afterward we tried out the coin-operated elephant and clown car on the boardwalk but June found the jerky movement alarming and asked to get off before the rides were over. Next we played on the beach some more. I showed her how to make a dribble castle and she got the hang of it quickly. We left the beach around 10:45, came home, showered, played and ate lunch. June told Beth she wanted to fly a kite on the beach and Beth said they could do it later. June plopped down on the couch next to her, took a few licks from her lollipop, looked at her and said, “Is it later now?”

My mom arrived around 3:30, just as June and I were about to make our third trip to the beach. (Noah, YaYa and Carole were already at the boardwalk and Beth was resting after cooking a delicious dinner of gazpacho, corn and avocado salad and spinach dip.) Mom got into her suit and came with us, which meant I got to swim for the first time. As she and June were playing a wave washed almost all the way over June, an experience she later declared, “a wittle bit scary.” After that, she sat solemnly on Mom’s towel until she was recovered enough to go roll in the sand and get herself almost entirely covered.

After dinner, we headed out to the boardwalk for frozen custard. Noah, Carole and I ventured down to the beach. Noah was running around in the surf, fully clothed and still holding his cone. I let him. “This is so fun!” he kept yelling. I felt like the meanest mom ever when I pointed out it was almost bedtime and made him leave.

Monday: Day 3

There are a couple awkward times of day for people with small children vacationing with people without them, but the most challenging one is probably the long hours between when the first child wakes and the last adult does. We were always trying to shush the kids but it never did much good. At one point on Monday morning I asked Noah in an exasperated tone what was so hard about remembering to keep quiet.

“I’m not very good at remembering,” he answered quite earnestly.

We tried to keep the kids quiet. I got Noah to read and we all drew pictures of animal-vegetable combinations. (Noah got the idea from Jack Prelutsky’s Scranimals—http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780688178192/Scranimals/index.aspx). I was particularly proud of my Pelicarrot. The pouch was a fat orange carrot and the wings were carrot greens. Eventually, we decided to take the kids down to the beach to fly a kite. By the time we were ready to go, Mom and YaYa were already up but Carole had managed to sleep through the din, so we left her to slumber in peace.

As we approached the beach, Beth noticed a potential flaw in the plan. There was no wind. I said maybe it would be better down by the water, but it wasn’t. The kite wouldn’t fly. After a half hour of trying to get it into the air and watching the kids play and scanning the water for dolphins–we saw a few–Beth said, “I think I’ve had enough of this.” This is a sentence I can’t imagine uttering at the beach under any circumstances, let alone after a measly half hour, but Beth’s not a beach person. It’s a mixed marriage.

She wanted to get herself a coffee but I asked if she could wait long enough so I could have a quick dip. June started to wail as I was in the water. I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t bother her when I swam the day before. I pointed to June from the water and made a questioning gesture. Beth pointed back at me emphatically. I shrugged and decided to ignore the crying for a few minutes, but it did take a good bit of the enjoyment out of my swim. June didn’t recover her equilibrium, even after I came out of the water, so Beth took her back to the house. Beth never got her coffee that day, but Noah and I did have a lovely hour together. He told me about the chapter of The Miserable Mill he read that morning and we watched the ships on the water and the pelicans in the sky. We played in the surf, discussed gravity and the pull of the moon and how tides and waves are made. We talked about how he might come swimming with me in the ocean when he’s a stronger swimmer. He seemed happy with this plan as long as it was comfortably in the future. He asked me what it feels like to stand with a big wave forming behind you. I went further out, stood in front of a gathering wave and came back to describe as precisely as I could how the wave pulls you toward it, lifts you up and drops you down. On the walk home I quizzed him on his times tables and we made up silly songs including this one about a French Jewish cow, sung to the tune of “Frère Jacques”: “Rosh Hashanah, Rosh Hashanah. Dormez Moo! Dormez Moo!” We sang it over and over again at the top of our lungs. I’m so infrequently alone with Noah I sometimes forget how fun it can be.

After lunch and June’s nap, Mom took June to Candy Kitchen and I met them down on the beach. When I found them, June was seated in the stroller on the sand, eating Swedish fish from a clear plastic box with a tiny sliver scoop. I wondered if the elaborate packaging had influenced her choice. We went through the normal routine of castles and playing in the water. June complained, not for the first time, that “the water won’t let us in,” meaning the waves wouldn’t. At one point she found a hole some older kids had dug near the water’s edge and she sat in it, letting the waves run over her legs. She and Mom dug their own hole (for a bunny) further up on the beach while I swam and June got close enough to some gulls to note the red markings on their beaks and legs. Finally she impressed Mom by bending from the waist until her head touched the sand and holding the pose for a long while (not long enough for me to get a picture though). Shortly after five, she was ready to go home so we washed our feet at a footbath (always fun for a small child) and she got settled in the stroller with her Swedish fish-in-a-box and we were off.

Tuesday: Day 4

“I thought your anniversary was in the winter,” my mother said when I told her Beth and I were going on separate gift-buying errands. I explained the anniversary of our commitment ceremony is in January, but our dating anniversary is July 15. She said she couldn’t believe we bought gifts for two anniversaries.

I shrugged. “We like anniversaries,” I said.

She said it must be a female thing and implied that men could not be coaxed into buying that many gifts. I don’t know if they can or not, having never tried.

I was also hoping to find a birthday present for my mom on this outing. Her birthday was Saturday and we were planning to celebrate it on Friday since we’d be packing up and leaving on Saturday morning. I complained to Beth I had no idea what to buy, that I’d hoped she’d see something and comment on it, but so far she hadn’t been in a shopping or even window-shopping mood.

Meanwhile June was begging me to take her to the beach. I explained we needed to run some errands first. No, no, she wanted to go to the beach. As is often the case, however, her mood improved when I got her out of the house. She waited patiently while I picked up a card and a gift certificate for a massage for Beth. I sprung for the hot stone massage—buying gifts at the beach makes me generous. We crossed paths with Beth as she was coming out of Café a Go-Go, having gotten the café con leche she wanted the day before. June and I were headed into a coffee shop across the street, which does not serve coffee as heavenly but which is also not run by a stern Mexican woman who does not approve of unruly children. I kissed Beth before we went our separate ways. She tasted of the cinnamon they put in the café con leche at Café a Go-Go. I resolved to get over there myself sometime later in the week.

Our errands done, June and I strolled toward the beach. We passed two Candy Kitchens on they way. When I said we were not going in, June said, completely in earnest, “ Is there no candy in there?”

More splashing in the surf ensued. Of course, on this day when I was dressed for errands and not the beach (I’d changed June into her suit in the coffee shop) June wanted to go in deeper than she had been and jump in every wave. She said she wanted to float a boat in the water. I thought about what toys could serve as boats and asked if floating the duck mold in a hole we dug would do. She agreed. We dug a hole and waited for the sea to rush in. When it did I set the mold down and was pleased at how boat-like it looked, floating convex side down. But now June wanted it to look duck-like, with the body aligned to look like a swimming duck, not floating on its side like a deceased duck, or a boat if you were inclined to look at it that way. Of course it wouldn’t float upright. As I pondered this problem, June solved it, by waiting for wave and holding the duck in it.

On the way home we passed the kite shop at the end of the boardwalk and I realized my mother had mentioned something she liked and it had not registered. She’d been complaining about how heavy her beach chair was and saying she’d like an aluminum frame one. Once when we’d walked by the kite shop, she’d found one she liked in the chair display, but decided it was too expensive. Voila. Perfect gift.

I didn’t get it then because we’d left the beach later than I intended, then made an impulse stop for Thrasher’s fries (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64536-2004May28.html). June was warm, tired and had a bellyful of fries. Predictably she started to nod off a few blocks from home and when I pushed the stroller up to the house, she was sound asleep.

In the afternoon, when Mom took the kids to Funland, I went back and got the chair. I left it in her room, with a note, as a surprise. She didn’t find it until she went to bed.

Wednesday: Day 5

On Wednesday, while Beth was having her massage, June (my best beach buddy) and I spent another morning at the beach. We made more dribble castles and the duck had more adventures and we took a walk. (“The ocean is following us. The ocean wants to come,” she’d observe whenever a wave lapped our feet.) On this walk, June finally picked a large white pebble for YaYa, who had requested one. As we sat on the wet sand, with the waves rushing over our legs and splashing up over our stomachs, a passerby stopped and complimented me for not overprotecting June and for “letting her get used to the water.” She said she’d seen kids with floaties on, with their feet barely in the water. I’ve seen the opposite, though—parents dragging terrified toddlers into the surf. This always makes me furious. Every kid’s comfort level is different and I think it’s our job to encourage our children while respecting their limits. As for myself, I remember being small, older than June but not by much, riding on my father’s shoulders in the ocean, so deep in that the water sometimes went over his head. He was holding on tight, though, and it never occurred to me to be afraid.

There was a comic moment shortly after we came home and finished our showers. The lawn service came on the one day I forgot to bring the towels inside the outdoor shower and left them on the back porch stairs. I sent a naked June out to retrieve them and when she heard the lawn mower start up, out of sight, but quite close around the corner of the house, she dashed away, terrified, taking the towels with her and leaving me, dripping and naked in the shower and wondering what to do. I stuck my head out the door and called to her. Very hesitantly, she came back and we hastily wrapped up and went inside.

After lunch, YaYa and Carole took Noah to the beach while, Beth, June and I napped. Mom told me Noah was really active in the water, jumping around and going in deep, up to his chin at times. I was surprised to hear it since he’s always been cautious in the water and he’s not as good a swimmer as I was at his age, despite years of on and off swimming lessons. He’s been asking to start his lessons up again, though, so maybe he’s ready to turn a corner. I would really like that.

Later in the afternoon, Beth, YaYa, Carole and the kids went for a bike ride/scooter ride/walk on the Junction and Breakwater Trail in Cape Henlopen State Park (http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/magazine/07Spr_DES_JunctionBreakwaterTrail.pdf). Beth rented a bike trailer for June and they rode through woods and farmland and marshes. They even picked raspberries. June was so enthusiastic about the berries that Beth and Noah left her behind with YaYa and Carole in the berry patch while they rode ahead.

Meanwhile, Mom and I lounged on the beach, she in her new chair and me on my new beach mat (a birthday present from YaYa). We talked and read and watched an osprey fly over the sea with a fish in its talons and I went for a swim. The water was calm. With no big waves to play in, I decided to float. I closed my eyes and bobbed up and down and felt the wind above and the water below. I could hear the whispering sound of the sand shifting several feet underneath me.

We split up for dinner. The older generation took the younger generation out for crepes and ice cream while Beth and I had our anniversary dinner at Planet X (http://www.planetxcafe.com/), followed by coffee and dessert at Café a Go-Go. Beth got me a book of essays about all fifty states (http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061470905/State_by_State/index.aspx) to remind me of our younger days when we traveled to all fifty states. We only finished four years ago, but most of these trips took place in our twenties. We talked about how strange it seems that fourteen of our twenty-two years together (nearly two-thirds) were pre-kids, and that June’s life has really been just a blip in that timeline, although of course, it doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes it’s good to remember the couple we were before we were a family.

We came home, put the kids to bed (Mom bathed June for us) and then the grownups sat on the porch, talking about matters sad (Mom and Jim recently gave up their two new cats after five months of trying to get their old cat to accept them and the old cat is seriously ill with cancer) and matters happy (YaYa and Carole’s sister Susan welcomed a new granddaughter that very day).

Thursday: Day 6

The next morning there was an early morning ice cream tasting at Browse About Books (http://www.browseaboutbooks.com/), a promotion to get people into the store I suppose. It ended at 9:00 a.m. and I couldn’t get enthusiastic about ice cream so early in the day (it not being the Fourth of July after all) but almost every one else was and I had downtown errands so we left Carole at the house and the rest of our party set out around 8:30. I bought a card for my mom when she was in another part of the store and when she left and the kids, Beth and YaYa settled in for story time, I peeled off from the group and went to pick out a birthday cake for my mom at the bakery. I deliberated between a mermaid cake and a lighthouse cake and chose the lighthouse.

I returned to the bookstore and found the stroller but puzzlingly, no relatives. It’s a big store and I figured they were browsing about somewhere, but after searching all over and not hearing Noah’s voice (that was the odd part—where Noah is, you hear him), I decided they must have gone to another store and left the stroller behind. I gave up on finding them and went back to the house. I found Noah and YaYa there. He’d gotten bored and they’d left story time early. I started to wonder if Beth and June had been in the store all along. They were, as it turned out. After waiting fretfully around the house, hoping they weren’t waiting for me, I finally headed down to the beach around 11:10 and I met them less than a block from the house. Beth had not been expecting me back at all and was blissfully unaware of the mix-up. She handed June off to me and we made a quick pre-lunch beach run.

I had no toys with me so I kept answering questions like “Do you have the ducky mold?”—“No, because I didn’t know you were coming,” ad naseum. June was exasperated when I put sun block on her in the parking lot, since we usually do it at home. (“How can grownups put sun block on people at the beach?” she wanted to know.) She was insistent about dribble castles despite the obstacle of having no pail. I decided to forget about keeping her clothes dry and we dug a hole close enough to the water that the waves ran in and we used it as a reservoir for runny sand. The only problem was that each time a wave came and filled it, it washed away all the castles we’d made. We made a game of it, though, to avoid disappointment. I even used the destruction of the castles as a timer. (“When the waves knock over all the castles, it will be time to go home.”)

At home I fixed lunch for June and left the kids in Beth’s care while Mom and I went out to lunch at a restaurant with boardwalk seating. I had steamed clams, one of my once or twice yearly departures from vegetarianism. When we returned, around two, I was surprised to find June was up unusually early from her nap. Beth and YaYa took the kids on another afternoon adventure to a water park on Route 1 (http://www.funatjunglejims.com/) where they rode in boats and went on slides and ate ice cream and had a fine time. I stayed behind and went to the beach with my mom. I swam, we talked and I read on the beach for the first tine all week and then I swam again. We came home and had a dinner of leftovers (Carole’s signature brown rice bake, YaYa’s baked macaroni and cheese and the Thai curry I brought home from Planet X). June was too tired to eat her dinner and just lay on the couch clutching her stuffed panda or sat on my lap while I ate. When she threatened to nod off right then and there, we decided to put her to bed posthaste, but we weren’t quick enough to avoid some miserable I-am-so-tired-all-I-can-do-is-wail meltdowns along the way. The upside is that both kids were in bed by 8:10. If I’d known what was coming we would have gone to bed earlier. June woke around 10:30, shortly after Beth and I had retired for the night…

Friday: Day 7

And then we were all up for the next two and half hours. June was restless and all over the bed. I kept trying to inch away from her flailing arms and legs. I tried sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed, a trick that often works, and several times I switched places with her, going back and forth between the bed and the air mattress where she had started the night. She kept following me. (It is one of the ironies of my parenting life that I can’t sleep with anyone touching me and I have co-slept with two kids into the preschool years.) At one point with all the moving around I knocked a lamp and a full glass of water off my bedside table and another time my pillow got misplaced and I had to go to the couch to get a replacement. If not for the skylight and all the windows in the living room, I would have stayed there. Before I left in search of a new pillow, I was rooting around under Beth’s thinking it might have got under there and she cursed at me, a very uncommon occurrence. I was about to take the air mattress to the back porch when June fell asleep. Shockingly, she was up for the day at 6:30, and quite chipper. I was not so chipper but I was awake for the day, too. Beth managed to doze until 8:00 or so. We never did figure out what was wrong with June. She might have been hot. It was a warm night and because it had been cool at night all week, we hadn’t put the air conditioning on.

My mom decided to leave the beach a day early to join her ailing cat and her worried husband. She took the kids on a morning outing. They returned with a toy each (a robot crab for Noah and a stuffed animal for June identified by various members of our party as a raccoon, a possum or a bushbaby—http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/vecase/behavior/Spring2006/Rogers/bushbaby%203.jpg). June says she picked the mystery animal “because I didn’t have enough stuffed animals.” I think she was serious, despite the fact that both the toy box and the doll crib at home are overflowing with stuffed animals. Throughout the day she could be seen hugging it and declaring her love to it.

Everyone gathered for lunch and birthday cake to see off my mom. Noah liked the card, which pictured cows in birthday hats asking, “Got cake?” (“And we do!” he said.) June was very impatient for Mom to open the card. I had everyone sign it and she’d added her own scribble, which she told us said, “Happy Birthday!” “I drewed in it,” she said, just so everyone would be clear. I expected June might melt down because of her bad night’s sleep, but it was Noah who had to be escorted, crying, from the table. (He wanted his robot crab to have its own slice of cake and we thought crumbs would gum up its works.) He recovered enough to return, eat cake and show Mom a photograph of her birthday present online. It’s a painting he made at art camp at the Purple School last week. We failed to bring it but fortunately Lesley put pictures of some of the kids’ artwork up on Facebook.

After we said our goodbyes to Mom, June and I settled in for a long nap and Beth somehow found the energy to take Noah to play miniature golf. She reports he was very well behaved and played a good game. She just barely beat him.

June and I had a quick trip down to the beach. When we arrived at the beach we saw lifeguards doing pushups in the sand. “They’re doing yoga on the beach!” June declared. We dug in the sand and played a game in which she piled wet sand on the duck, who lamented how dirty it was getting and cheered for the waves when they came to clean it off. This was amusing for longer than you might think.

We had dinner out, at Grotto Pizza, and bought some t-shirts and walked home via the boardwalk. “Why is it our last summer vacation ever?” June wanted to know on the way home. The last full day of this vacation, she meant, but she sounded as sad as if she spoke the literal truth. I knew how she felt.

Saturday: Day 8

I stumbled out to the dining area of the house on Saturday morning to the sad sight of Beth filling out a survey for the realty and Noah writing a postcard for Sasha. So, it was true, we really were leaving.

We packed, said goodbye to YaYa and Carole, packed some more and checked out. June and I played on the beach one last time while Beth and Noah hung out in a coffee shop. Then Beth watched the kids while I had my last swim. The waves were tremendous, the best of the whole week. After I swam, we ate leftover pizza on a bench on the boardwalk, took an illicit shower in the outdoor shower of a downtown motel and drove off, leaving our beach week behind.

And that was the really unfortunate event.