Category Archives: Travel

Rain or Shine

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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.

Two Weekends

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I had a long week and Beth did, too. She had to work late on Thursday night and will be working this weekend, too. It seems like a good time to reflect on the past two weekends. They were very different from each other but each charming in its own way.

Two weekends ago, Beth and I dropped the kids off at my mother and stepfather’s house, had pizza with them, and then and headed for a hotel in nearby Chester County. The original plan was for Mom and Jim to take the kids to Sesame Place on Saturday but that weekend was during the heat wave so after Mom and I conferred, she decided to take them to the Please Touch Museum (http://www.pleasetouchmuseum.org/) instead.

Beth and I went out for ice cream at Friendly’s on our way to the hotel Friday night in order to establish a festive mood. Saturday we spent the morning at the Brandywine River Museum (http://www.brandywinemuseum.org/), a museum mostly dedicated the works of N.C., Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. I’ve been to this museum several times, mostly as a kid, but I’d never done the tour of N.C. Wyeth’s house and studio before (http://www.brandywinemuseum.org/ncstudio.html) probably because until 1994 there were Wyeths still living in the house, so that was fun. I especially liked seeing the studio. It’s a beautiful space with huge windows, a mural up on the wall and props all around. When you’re in there it feels as if N.C. has just stepped out, even though he died in 1945.

In the museum I was particularly charmed by “In a Dream I Meet General Washington” (http://brandywine.doetech.net/Detlobjps.cfm?ParentListID=81915&ObjectID=1409117&rec_num=5#42) in the N.C. Wyeth collection. Click on the thumbnail. It will enlarge. I also liked “Evening at Kuerners” in the Andrew Wyeth Gallery (http://www.swoyersart.com/andrew_wyeth/kuerners.htm). It was nice to stroll through a museum at my own pace, having time to look at the art and actually read the captions as well.

For lunch we headed to Kennet Square, mushroom capital of the world. We decided we’d have mushrooms at every lunch and dinner during our stay. We began fulfilling this pledge by ordering friend mushrooms and a Portobello salad, along with a Brie, pecan and blueberry plate. We browsed in a few shops, spending the most time in a used bookstore. I emerged with a book of Chester County ghost stories, for Noah (but I read it before I gave it to him) and a trio of Agatha Christie novels. After visiting an ice cream parlor, we headed back to the hotel, where we read without interruption for the rest of the afternoon. Before the weekend was out I had finished the ghost story book and started on one of the mysteries I was meaning to save for the beach. (Just for context, I should mention that I just last week finished a short story collection I started in May. It was a long one, but still, the point is I don’t get to read much in the summer.)

We dined at the Kennett Square Inn, a nineteenth-century inn that’s allegedly haunted (http://www.kennettinn.com/). I read about it in the book, but the ghost was also mentioned on the back of the menu. We didn’t see her (she’s a Colonial-era girl), but we did hear fellow diners wondering if they’d see her. Even without supernatural enhancement, we enjoyed our meal. (I had mushroom ravioli and crème brulee.)

The countryside around Chadd’s Ford is pretty (there’s a reason those Wyeths settled here) and there were a number of parks and gardens nearby but the heat was still withering, so we spent Sunday morning reading, first in the room, then at a Starbucks (the local coffeehouse I wanted to try was closed Sundays) and then we had an early lunch (mushroom quiche for me) and headed back to Mom’s to pick up the kids. June showed us the German porcelain doll Mom bought her on her recent trip to Europe. Noah looked up some German names for her online and June named her Ursula. Ursula has zipped right past Ella and Violet and is now June’s favorite doll.

We had a brief visit with my friend Pam before driving home. Pam and I went to high school together and now she lives in England and teaches at the University of Sussex. During the past year she has been living with her husband and two kids in her childhood home, and trying to sell it, as her parents have moved. We caught them a week before they were going to fly back to the U.K. We ate leftovers from the goodbye party they’d hosted the day before, chatted and watched the kids play in the sprinkler. And then we drove home.

The following weekend we set aside both afternoons to take each of the kids to a movie alone. On Saturday, Noah went over to Sasha’s while we took June to see Winnie the Pooh. She loved it. She loved going to the movies with both moms and no brother. “It’s my special day,” she kept announcing. And she loved being in a big theater with her own bag of popcorn (she ate the whole thing!) and she loved the film itself. She kept talking excitedly about what was going on and laughing at the jokes. Her favorite part was when Pooh’s stuffing was coming out, she said later. A week later she seems to remember the plot pretty well. Today she drew a series of pictures of Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Kanga, Roo and the Backson in various scenes from the movie and taped them together into a book.

It’s so hard to find an innocent kids’ movie that’s not too scary or full of snarky jokes these days that I really appreciated it. And I think a lot of parents did, too. Beth said it’s doing very well at the box office. Among my own circle of friends, the Mallard Duck’s mom recently wrote a blog post about seeing Winnie the Pooh with her daughter that’s worth reading. She captured exactly what I felt about it (http://mimi37.blogspot.com/). Also, I realize this is a bit meta, because she links to me in this post, but bear with me and read it.

Sunday, we left June with a sitter and went to see Time Bandits at AFI (http://www.afi.com/) with Noah. Noah didn’t exclaim about it being his special day, but still it was nice to have the chance to focus on him without the competing chatter of his little sister. I saw Time Bandits thirty years ago when it came out in theaters at least twice. I remembered loving it but not a lot of detail about the plot. I was just a little nervous about it for Noah because of the fuzziness of my memory and because I was fourteen, and not ten, when I saw it. It was rated PG, but it was made in the days before PG-13, when that rating covered a wider range of material.

As it turned out, it was just at his level in terms of action. The violence was comparable to the Chronicles of Narnia films we’ve watched at home and I think the very mild sexual innuendo probably went over his head. He loved most of the humor. I think he missed a few jokes, but the line “So that’s what an invisible barrier looks like,” made him guffaw and he also liked the part where Evil blows up a one of his minions for asking an impertinent question and then concedes, “Good question,” and goes on to answer it. I don’t think Noah’s ready for Monty Python yet ( it’s both racier and gorier) but it made me look forward to when he is.

As different as the weekends were, I think what I liked about them was the same thing. We were split up in unusual combinations. Beth and I don’t make enough time for dates and alone time, or rather, we resolve to and then we do and I really enjoy it and then we slip out of the habit. That’s the pattern, so a weekend alone was a nice luxury. Thanks, Mom and Jim! We also don’t have a lot of two-parent-one-child time with either of the kids and I think that’s important, too. As easy as it is to get bogged down in the hassles of day to day life, every so often I find myself thinking of the light coming through N.C. Wyeth’s studio windows and I know Winnie the Pooh’s adventure with the Backson is still reverberating in June’s imagination. I think these two weekends did us all good.

Spring Break Trilogy: Part II, The Beach

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Day 4: Tuesday

Tuesday morning we packed and then drove the full car to the kids’ dentist. June was very brave and co-operative, though she had so much trouble with the bite wings that the dentist, having found no signs of cavities, decided to skip her x-rays. June got a bag of toys, a Dora sticker that said, “No cavities! ¡Ni una caries!” and had her nailed painted by one of the hygienists. She chose five different shades of pink and purple. Over the past several days I keep catching unexpected, startling glances of her painted nails. They make her look older, still like a little girl, but like the next step up in the category of little girl, if that makes sense.

Noah had two cavities in baby teeth that are about to come out, so no treatment was necessary. From his x-rays, the dentist predicted he’d be losing the last of his baby teeth soon and all at once. She gave us the cards of three orthodontists. I can’t believe it’s time to start thinking about orthodontia, but apparently it is. He got some trinkets, too, and declined the manicure.

Then we were off to the beach. We listened to Series of Unfortunate Events #10 (The Slippery Slope) while June was asleep and some Magic Tree House books while she was awake. We arrived in Rehoboth around dinnertime and went out for Mexican. The food was good but we may never be able to go back to this restaurant because in a distracted moment when both kids and the waiter were all asking me something at once, I called the waiter “sweetie.” Somehow I managed not to die of embarrassment on the spot.

We went back to our hotels, bathed the kids and put them to bed and I slipped down to the beach. It was cool enough that I needed a jacket but not so cold that I felt I needed to keep moving so as not to freeze, so I sat on the beach and watched the ocean hurl itself onto the shore.

Day 5: Wednesday

Wednesday was gorgeous, like an early summer’s day plopped down into the middle of April. It got up into the mid-80s according to the digital clock/thermometer on Rehoboth Avenue.

We ate breakfast on the boardwalk. Afterwards Noah took a scooter ride all the way down to the South end of the boardwalk while June and I played on the beach. She drew a unicorn in the sand with the edge of a shell and dug a hole, looking for dinosaur bones. Not finding any, she decided to bury a cache of seashells, as treasure for someone else to find. When she’d filled in the hole, she marked it with an X.

We found a big pool of water that had formed in a depression in the sand and soon she was wading and splashing in it. She was bare legged, but soon her skirt and underwear were uncomfortably wet and she wanted to leave the beach. I suggested she get changed into her bathing suit. She was surprised but pleased by this idea. Her bathing suit? Outside? In spring? It was lucky the hotel had a pool because otherwise we would not have even brought bathing suits.

Noah joined us on the beach just as we were getting ready to go back to the room to change so he got changed, too, and we spent the rest of the morning on the beach making castles, wading and running around like maniacs (well, that last one was just the kids). The warmth and the sunlight were intoxicating, as they always are the first day spring shows you a foretaste of summer.

After lunch, June napped in the hotel room while I worked on a project I’m doing for Sara, rewriting and simplifying medical abstracts. This set was about a compound found in tea that has relaxing properties. It took June a long while to fall asleep (she’s used to being alone when she naps) and she was chatty, but about ten minutes before I was about to give up my work plan for lost, I realized she’d been quiet for a couple minutes and sure enough, she was asleep. When she woke, Beth took both kids to the pool while I continued to work. Then Beth took June to pick up some Chinese takeout while I read the last two chapters of The Sea of Monsters to Noah. They were gone a while, so he had time to practice percussion as well. (He has a practice pad so it’s not as loud as you might think.) Beth and I ate in the room and the kids ate on the balcony and then we took a stroll on the boardwalk.

It was still warm, in the low 80s. We ended up sitting on a bench, most of us bare legged, eating frozen custard and watching the sky grow pinker and pinker. June kept pointing to different parts of the sky, indicating which was the “most beautifulest.” Finally she said, “I don’t think anything in the world could be more beautiful than this.” I had to agree.

I went to the beach after the kids were bathed and in bed. It was hopping down there, full of kids with parents less strict about bedtime than we are. I remembered being nine years old, in bed on summer nights, listening to the shouts of the visiting children of our tenant, a divorced father. They were playing in my yard when I had to be in bed. It was almost unbearable. My nine-year-old self chided me for putting the kids to bed on time, but I ignored her.

I found a place near the water, away from the crowds, where the sand was comfortably inclined and sat down with my back leaning against it. The sand was cool but not cold, the waves roared, I could see the Big Dipper, or maybe it was the Little Dipper. I’m not good with constellations. I felt profoundly at home.

Day 6: Thursday

Temperatures were more seasonable Thursday but it was still sunny and beautiful. After breakfast we flew kites on the beach, and then Beth had a massage while June and I took a walk to the North end of the boardwalk and Noah stayed in the room and practiced percussion again. When June and I came back, we ate Mexican and Chinese leftovers and played our second game of checkers of the day. We’d had a surprisingly close match at breakfast but now she was tired and even with advice from Noah, she was not playing as well. When I had eight of her pieces and she only had four of mine, she declared, “This game is boring.”

After Beth got home and had her lunch, she and Noah left so June could nap and I could work. This time June fell asleep almost at once, but I ran into technical difficulties with the PC and had to call Beth to come back and help me so I lost more than half of June’s (fortunately long) nap. I scaled my goal in half and finished while Beth and the kids swam in the pool again.

I read the first chapter of The Titan’s Curse to Noah while June had her bath and after Noah’s bath, we left for dinner. Then we came home, read some more, and put the kids to bed. I resisted the urge to hit the beach and did two more abstracts before bed.

Day 7: Friday

By Friday morning it was downright cold, 46 degrees and overcast at 8:05 when June and I went out in search of breakfast. Noah had been in bed absorbed in Car and Driver when June was ready to go so we’d decided to split up. We went to a coffee shop and played three rounds of Hex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_(board_game) while she ate her bagel and I ate my oatmeal. It was the first time she’d ever played but she won one round. We were supposed to meet Beth and Noah on the boardwalk at nine, but when I called Beth she said Noah was still reading and still in his pajamas. June was not warmly dressed so we went back to the room. Noah had finished reading and had decided he wanted pancakes. Beth just wanted a muffin and some coffee so we agreed to switch kids and I took Noah out to breakfast at a diner.

Since I didn’t need to eat, I read to him while he ate. We’d agreed to try to read together every day during Noah’s break and we’re now making much more rapid progress than we had been through the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Jackson_%26_the_Olympians)
Noah received for Christmas. It’s been satisfying and fun. At first Noah was concerned I was reading too loudly and that it might bother the other patrons. So he joined me on my side of the table and snuggled up next to me while I read more softly and he ate his chocolate-chip pancakes. He’d been self-conscious enough to worry about being read to in public but not too self-conscious to put his head on my shoulder. He’s a very young almost ten in some ways, but I can’t say I mind.

Because we ate breakfast in shifts, it was ten-thirty by the time we’d finished, so we hit Candy Kitchen for some treats to take home before going back to the hotel to pack in time for the eleven o’clock checkout. (Well, Beth and I packed while the kids played on the luggage cart.)

The whole time we were in Rehoboth, June had been seeing toys she wanted, a set of four mermaid dolls with different colored hair you could comb and brush, a stuffed pony, and a purple unicorn beanie baby with a sparkly pink horn and hooves and disturbingly large eyes. The last two were at Candy Kitchen and while we were in there she renewed her appeals. After I’d said no, and after she’d given up saying, “But pleeeaaase,” I spied her kneeling on the floor, silently petting the little unicorn. That did me in. I decided to go back later and get it for her Easter basket.

Earlier in the trip we’d noticed a newly opened bakery that allows kids to decorate their own cupcakes and we’d promised to go back. As the beach trip was practically over we were running out of time for this activity so we went over there and watched as the kids arranged sprinkles and M&Ms and lollipops on a frosted cupcake. Then we had them boxed up for later and left. Now that we had enough sugar to last until the Second Coming, we were just about ready to leave the beach.

Beth took the kids while I snuck back to Candy Kitchen, bought the unicorn, pulled on my boots so I could wade in the ocean I and had my last ten minutes on the beach until August. It was lunchtime by then but no one was all that hungry, so we just got smoothies and hit the road. All the way home, I tried not to think about how very long a time four months was seeming. But luckily, the beach is always here, patiently waiting for us to return.

My Father’s Office

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A guest blog entry by Beth.

My father died unexpectedly earlier this month. There is so much to say about his life and the complex feelings that his death brings that it is impossible to say it. My brother’s eulogy was just about right: He wasn’t the best dad and he wasn’t the worst dad. He was our dad. We will miss him.

My father and his work were somewhat inseparable. He practiced law with the same firm for over 40 years. He would bring home stacks of used paper so we could draw on the blank sides. Sometimes he’d bring home his Dictaphone with its state-of-the-art cassette tape technology and let my brother and me record our voices. It was awesome when he did that.

When I arrived in my home town after learning of dad’s death, I had a strong urge to see his office. He’d sometimes take my brother or me in with him on a Saturday when we were young and I loved going there. I hadn’t been there for ages. I finally had time to go the day after the memorial service.

The law library, with its smell of old books and tobacco, was now a conference room but otherwise not much about the building had changed. Dad’s actual office space had moved a few times over the years, from an upstairs room to the first floor then closer to the front of the building. One of his law partners showed us into his office, which was filled with the things you’d expect to see if someone left work thinking they’d be back the next day – a table piled with files and maps of a local mine he was working with, a jacket draped over a chair, umbrellas in the closet.

There were two things there I was particularly glad to see. The first was a letter opener, shaped like a sword, that rested in a crystalline glass base, Excalibur-like. I was fascinated by it as a child, watching dad as he sliced open the mail we had picked up from the firm’s post office box, thinking it sharp and dangerous and, perhaps, a little magical.

The other item was a clock, an odd clock, really, though it had never seemed odd to me. It was made of a square wooden plaque with coins embedded in it to mark the hours. The coins were from 1964, two years before I was born and the last year that U.S. dimes, quarters and half dollars were made primarily of silver.

My brother and I spent several hours in dad’s office that afternoon as his colleague went through my father’s personal effects so we could decide what to do with them. He’d gone to law school with dad and was instrumental in bringing him to the firm. I think it was hard for him to believe that my father was suddenly no longer there.

Some things we looked at were mundane, like car repair receipts for vehicles dad hadn’t owned for years. Some came with great stories, like the certificate of admission to the bar of the Supreme Court that he had obtained early in his career when he had a conscientious objector case that might have gone that far (though it ultimately didn’t). Some were mysterious, like the dozens of empty cigarette lighters that he kept in drawers at the office and at the house. They were bits and pieces of my dad’s life but, like my words, the picture they create is incomplete.

Dad’s clock is now in my office. My kids will see it there when they come in with me on a snow day or a weekend. It’s not always easy or convenient to bring them to work with me. But when they ask, I often say yes, remembering how special it felt whenever I got a glimpse of my dad’s work world, where he spent so many hours, with his clock of silver and the sword in the stone.

Fear Not

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Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

Luke 2:10

On Saturday afternoon, around 3:45, Beth and I were walking along the boardwalk; Noah and June raced ahead. Every now and then he would tug on her arm or grab her coat to slow her down, telling her she couldn’t go inside Santa’s house until the adults caught up with them.

“Let go of her hood,” I yelled as Beth yelled almost identical words. It’s not like she’d actually go inside without any of us, we joked to each other. June’s always been shy around Santa. In years past it has taken all the courage she can muster to walk into the little house with Noah at her side and stand in Santa’s general proximity while Noah relays her requests. We weren’t expecting anything different this year.

But before we got to the house, a woman dressed as an elf peered around the corner and asked if it was okay for the kids to come in. We indicated it was and hurried up a little.

When we got to the doorway, June was already sitting on Santa’s lap and he was asking her what she wanted for Christmas. She had her answer all ready: “A princess book and a princess doll.” Santa told her to go to bed early on Christmas Eve so he would have time to deliver her gifts. We barely had time to snap a picture before it was Noah’s turn. As the kids came out, admiring their flashing necklaces–hers was in the shape of a stocking and his was a Christmas tree- Beth and kept looking at each other and exclaiming over June’s unexpected bravery.

I’ve been somewhat afraid of Christmas this year, or rather I’ve been afraid of the emotions it might stir up, as my father died in mid-January last year and my last visit to him started on the day after Christmas. But so far, it hasn’t been too bad. I mean, I’m thinking about him a lot, and I even had a dream recently about going to visit him but being unable to find him because I was supposed to meet him at his new office, which was on a street with completely random street numbers. But Christmas music and decorations and sweets seem the same as ever, more comforting than sad. When I am hit with sadness it comes unexpectedly. A few weeks ago the kids and I went to a marionette show at a nearby community college with the Toad and her mother. One of the puppeteers looked a bit like my father. It wasn’t even a very close resemblance, but it was still hard to watch him up there on stage. I think grief is like that–you don’t get to decide or even predict when it will come to you. So I’ve realized it does me no good to go in fear of eggnog lattes or Christmas carols.

And the Christmas story itself is, at least in part, about overcoming fear. How would the shepherds have felt, seeing the angels swoop down on their field at night? How would Mary have received the news about her impending unwed motherhood? I imagine they all would have been sore afraid indeed, at least at first.

After we left Santa, we did some Christmas shopping (this being the ostensible reason for our annual December weekend in Rehoboth—but if you know me at all you know the real reason). Beth and I split up and bought many of June’s Christmas gifts right under her nose, including a princess book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paper_Bag_Princess) and a princess doll. I will not say what, if anything, we bought for Noah because he reads my blog now. Sorry, Noah Bear.

Then we headed to Grotto’s to order a pizza to take back to our hotel room. June had slept poorly the night before and then skipped her nap that afternoon and she was clearly exhausted so our evening plan was pizza and a movie in the room. I was expecting her to conk out on the bed pretty early in the feature presentation so we bathed both kids and got them into their pajamas before starting the movie.

We were watching Christmas Is Here Again (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUpxgaH4F4g&feature=related), which is one of the stranger Christmas films I’ve ever seen. We found it at a video store two Christmases ago and it’s become one of the movies in our regular Christmas rotation. It’s a rather dark tale about an orphan girl who sets out to find Santa’s stolen sack, which has been missing for over thirty years and without which Christmas can no longer celebrated. The girl is accompanied by an elf, a baby reindeer, a polar bear and a fox, one of whom is a double agent, but I won’t give away that part. They have to journey down into the mines of the devilish villain where child slaves toil to extract coal and precious stones. And it goes on like that. The villain, Crad, is very creepy, a shrouded fellow with crooked teeth and red eyes. He scares the pants off June every time. In fact, sometimes Noah only has to sing “I stole Santa’s sack/The sack he carried on his back./I stole Santa’s sack/And I’ll never give it back!” to send June running out of the room.

Nevertheless, she insists on watching this movie, and we let her. I struggle a lot with what’s too scary for the kids to watch, especially June because she’s both younger and more sensitive to on-screen scariness than Noah was at her age. (Interestingly, some of the books that spooked him when he was a preschooler do nothing for her.) But if it’s rated G, I will usually let her watch it, as long as we’re not at a movie theater where the screens are bigger and her habit of running of the room at the scary parts would be more inconvenient for everyone involved.

And she did run out of the room at least twice, even though she declared several times before we started watching that “This is not a scary movie for me.” I accompanied her to the bathroom and we waited for her to be ready to come back. After a while she decided she could just hide under the covers whenever Crad came on screen, and that’s what she did. Much to my surprise, she did not fall asleep during the hour and fifteen minute film, though when I put her to bed soon after, she fell asleep quickly and slept an impressive ten fours and forty minutes (from 8:05 to 6:45). She may not have made it through the entire movie without hiding, but some year she will. She’d already overcome one long-standing fear and that’s plenty for one day.

Once June was asleep, I took Noah down to the hotel lobby where we could read and then I brought him back up and put him to bed at 8:45. Beth had gone to bed herself and seemed to be asleep. I sat on the bathroom floor with the light on and read for twenty minutes until Noah was asleep and then I got into my warm socks, rubber boots, coat and woolen scarf. It was raining out but it’s not every evening I have the chance to walk on the beach and I’m not afraid of a little rain.

Everything We Have

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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, thrilled and joyful, I walked back to the hotel.

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 with the clown on the boardwalk 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.