Category Archives: Travel

Tidings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over the River and Through the Woods…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That was foolish,” Beth commented.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When We Were Down Beside the Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The First Week in August: A Week in Pictures

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

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

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

The First Day in August

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On the first day in August
I want to wake up by your side
After sleeping with you
On the last night in July
In the morning
We’ll catch the sun rising
And we’ll chase it from the mountains
To the bottom of the sea

When the day is over
And the night air comes to chill us
You’ll build a fire
And we’ll watch the flames dancing

You’ll fall asleep
With your arm around my shoulder
And nothing will come between us
On the first night in August
The first day in August

“The First Day in August,” by Carole King & Charles Larkey
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/The-First-Day-In-August-lyrics-Carole-King/CC42E4EE3C2E6FC448256E2F00060EE2

As a teenager, I was fascinated with this song, with the intoxicating idea of adult life as a date that never ends. Of course, marriage isn’t exactly like this. On workdays, Beth’s away for at least ten hours and weekends are often consumed with chores and errands. Vacations are the best opportunity for uninterrupted family togetherness, but of course, that togetherness now includes two small, lovable, but very demanding people. As it happens, we are all on vacation now. We’re staying at a cabin in Oglebay (http://www.oglebay-resort.com/) with two friends of Beth’s from high school. It’s like a grown-up, week-long slumber party.

However, on the first day of August I didn’t wake up by anyone’s side, not June’s and not even Beth’s. On the first two nights of our stay here, June has slept, not only in her own bed, but in a different room than me for the first time in her life, apart from the five nights she spent in the newborn nursery under observation for jaundice. On the first night here we put June and Noah to bed in their own room together and she woke around ten and cried and Beth went to settle her down and she slept the rest of the night. Then last night she slept right through. On both mornings she has slept in until around seven or so, which makes for some pretty luxurious sleeping conditions. She seems to like having Noah in the room (she’s put out if he wakes before she does and leaves to go read in the living room where it’s light) and he says “It’s fun having Juney in the room,” so we’re thinking about moving her into his room soon after we get home.

This extra sleep came just when I needed it most. One reason Beth and I are sleeping in separate beds is that I’m sick. Our bedroom has two double beds. We’re used to a queen so sharing a double makes for close quarters for two plus-size women, even under optimal circumstances. Given the choice of room to stretch out and intimacy with my hacking cough and sniffling and the rustling of my cough drop wrappers and tissues, Beth chose her own bed. It’s certainly the choice I’d make in her shoes and I am also enjoying the roomy bed all to myself.

Our cabin-mates are Heather and Sue, each of whom is a single mom with one boy apiece. Baruc is four and Jake is almost six. Since June’s used to playing with her older brother and Noah is used to playing with his younger sister, the dynamic between them is pretty good, if quite loud. They all enjoy bouncing balls and playing with the bubble rocket, which you launch by stomping on a pad that forces air into the rocket, causing it to rise from its bed of bubble soap into the air, leaving a trail of bubbles behind it. It’s really quite an impressive sight. They also like running around on the grass outside the cabin and looking for the deer that wander through the park in great numbers. When Baruc and June proposed that the two of them go alone into the woods to “look for the deer’s house” (a plan immediately squelched by the two children’s three mothers), Jake and Noah almost simultaneously chimed in that “deer don’t have houses!”

In the morning I took June to the playground while Beth and Noah headed for Target to pick up a few things we forgot the pack (pajamas for Noah and a swim suit for me). We stayed until she wanted to leave, which almost never happens. It turns out an hour and thirty-five minutes is how long she wants to stay at the playground.

In the afternoon, while June and I napped (I slept an hour and a half on top of a rare eight hours’ sleep), everyone else went to the swimming pool. Then Beth took June to the playground again (they stopped at the nature center where June played with animal puppets and colored). Noah and I stayed home and watched Monsters, Inc. with Baruc and Jake, both of whom fell asleep on the couch in the middle.

Relatives started trickling in later in the afternoon. Beth’s mom and Aunt Carole, Heather’s mother, Sue’s father, stepmother and sister all came for dinner. They brought pasta salad, fruit salad, homemade chocolate chip cookies and two kinds of pie (peach and strawberry-rhubarb). We feasted on shish kabobs and the food the guests brought. Afterwards the kids tore around the lawn and the grown-ups talked and played cards.

We’ll be here a week. There are paddleboats and miniature golf and a marshmallow roast and berry picking expedition and a nature hike on the agenda. I’m sure there will be more trips to the playground and the pool, during this long, lazy first week of August.

On the first night of August I went to sleep alone again. I was starting to feel a little better, enough to miss Beth, just a few feet away but in a different bed. I wondered if I’d be up coughing again and how contagious I was, but in the end I didn’t ask her to join me. The endless date of our twenties, thirties and beyond is going well, I think, but I’m at a point in my life where space to myself, for myself is almost as exotic as sleeping all night with a lover was in my girlish imagination.

A Series of Fortunate Events

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

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

Saturday: Day 1

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

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

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

Sunday: Day 2

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

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

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

Monday: Day 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday: Day 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday: Day 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday: Day 6

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

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

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

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

Friday: Day 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday: Day 8

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

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

And that was the really unfortunate event.

The Sea-Side for Easter

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“He explained why he was paying his visit so early in the season; the family had gone to the seaside for Easter; the cook was doing spring-cleaning, on board wages, with special instructions to clear out the mice.”

From “The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse” by Beatrix Potter

The last time we went to the library, I checked out a Beatrix Potter collection for June. She loves these stories, even though the language is old-fashioned and goes right over her head. The appeal might be the detailed illustrations of little animals doing all matter of interesting things. Anyway, you probably know “The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse” even if you think you don’t. It’s Potter’s take on the City Mouse and the Country Mouse story. The country mouse accidentally travels to the town in a hamper of vegetables and is miserable there. He manages to return home and then one of his town acquaintances comes to visit him via the hamper, and he too is miserable and returns to town as soon as he can. The moral is “One place suits one person, another place suits another person.” Though we’ve lived in the Washington metropolitan area for going on eighteen years now, Beth sometimes refers to herself as “a country mouse” (albeit less frequently than she used to) because she grew up in a smaller town.

I’m not really a country mouse or a city mouse. I am a beach mouse. When I am not at the beach, which is, alas, most of the time, I am often fantasizing about the next time we will go. We spent Easter weekend in Rehoboth. We wanted a get-away during Noah’s spring break and Beth had Good Friday off work so it was convenient. We also wanted to tour houses and pick one to rent for our beach week in mid-July.

Rehoboth was all decked out for Easter. At the boardwalk Grotto Pizza (http://www.grottopizza.com/) where we had dinner on Friday there were garlands of bunnies and chicks across the windows. The store windows were filled with more bunnies, chicks and eggs. The most elaborate display was probably at Dolles (http://www.dolles-ibachs.com/) where a two-foot tall mechanical chick kept hatching out of its egg, along with other mobile, fuzzy, Easter-themed statuary.

Saturday morning we toured houses. I’d emailed our requirements to the realtor earlier in the week and she’d found two houses that met them. After viewing the houses online, Beth decided we could spend a little more money to get closer to the beach and to get a house with wireless internet. We found two more properties we wanted to see. Only two of the four houses were available for viewing as the other two had off-season tenants. The house I’d liked best in the online pictures seemed less charming in person. The other one was has soaring ceilings in the living and dining area, a lot of windows, a very open, inviting design and two screened porches. It was bit more than we wanted to spend and only had three bedrooms (we’re expecting my mom, Beth’s mom and her Aunt Carole for part or all the week) but we figured out where we could sleep everyone and it was closer to the beach (which appealed to me) and had wireless internet (which appealed to Beth), so our choice seemed clear. I was glad to have the decision made and to find such a nice house because we’ve usually taken care of this earlier in the year and I was a little afraid everything would be booked.

It was rainy and cold most of the day Saturday and clear but windy and even colder on Sunday, so we didn’t spend as much time on the beach as I would have liked. I got in several five to ten minute stints, however, with one or both kids. We made the most of these short trips: we built and destroyed sand castles and pressed the duck mold into the wet sand to make a duck family and filled and dumped the dump truck. June removed beach-grass splinters from the paws of imaginary kittens and Noah and I waded into the water in our rubber boots.

I also took June for a long stroll on the boardwalk, where it was less windy, and I enjoyed an almost hour-long solo walk on the beach late Saturday afternoon. It had stopped raining by this time but dark clouds hung over the sea and the wind whipped my hair around my face. The surf was rough and dramatic, especially around the rock jetties where I stood, as far out as I dared, with the water churning around my ankles. As I was leaving the beach, I picked up a little peach-colored spiral shell fragment and tucked it into my pocket. When I came back to the hotel room, Beth asked how the beach was and I told her it was glorious.

The rest of the time we wandered around town, ate out, swam in the hotel pool and hung out in our room, which was on the fifth floor of the hotel and had a very decent side view of the beach. I spent a lot of time staring out the window while Beth worked on her laptop, Noah read and June played with the wide variety of plastic toys we were issued at check-in.

This morning, Easter morning, we were awoken at 6:25 by what sounded like a chorus and organ music. It was sunrise service at the Bandstand (http://www.rehobothbandstand.com/) on Rehoboth Avenue one block over. There were breaks between the music, first short ones, then a longer one, probably for the sermon, but just when we thought it was over, the music started up again. After this had been going on for a while, I got up and peered out our window. We were high up enough to have a pretty good view of the crowd, which spilled over onto the sidewalks. I can’t say any of us were thrilled about this wake-up call, especially since someone in a nearby room had a television blaring until 1:00 a.m. But I wasn’t too cranky either, since Noah was already awake when it started and he probably would have woken us soon and it was a joyful noise. Even though I am not a Christian, I do find the Easter story moving. I also feel like if we are going to dye eggs and buy chocolate in bunny and egg shapes—celebrating the pagan-derived spring-and-fertility aspects of the holiday– we need to be tolerant of more conventional celebrations, even if they take place at the crack of dawn. That’s my take anyway. I think Beth may have felt differently.

During the sermon break, we tried to get back to sleep but it was useless, so when June noticed the two chocolate bunnies sitting up on the table around 6:55, I brought them over and read the note Beth had penned the night before:

Dear Noah and June,

Hoppy Easter!

These are for you. Glad I found you! Xander and Matthew [our cats] told me you were here. I also hid some baskets of goodies at your house.

Love,
The E.B.

Soon the kids were snuggling in bed eating their Easter bunnies, a white chocolate one for Noah and milk chocolate for June. After breakfast we left Beth at Café a Go-Go (http://delaware.metromix.com/restaurants/american/cafe-a-go-go-rehoboth-beach/121443/content) with a café con leche, a copy of The New Yorker and strict instructions to stay at least a half hour. (I think she violated the spirit of the agreement by checking her voice mail and discovering a work crisis in progress but she was gone long enough that I believe she did read her magazine for the specified time. At least that is what I am choosing to believe.)

The kids and I spent a little time on the beach while she was at the coffee shop. The sun was brilliant on the water, turning different parts of it blue, green and golden brown. After ten minutes June needed a diaper change and wanted to go back to the hotel. As we left the boardwalk, June, apparently having forgotten she wanted to leave, asked, “Why are we leaving the beach and boardwalk?” Why indeed, I wondered.

Driving home, en route to our egg hunt and the mad coming-home rush of unpacking and housecleaning and grocery shopping and our egg salad dinner, we made a quick stop on Route 1 for Beth to buy herself a new pair of Crocs. Noah noticed the miniature golf course attached to the store and wanted to play. I told him maybe someone would take him this summer. We’ll have plenty of adults. “Why don’t we live near the beach?” he asked. I think he was more motivated by mini-golf than the grandeur of nature because he’d greeted my statement on the beach earlier that day that “This is the best place in the world” with skepticism. In fact, he replied that in front of a computer is the best place in the world. Alas, I am raising a Philistine child.

Anyway, I replied, “I don’t know. It’s sad, isn’t it?” Takoma Park is home and I love many, many things about it. But I’ve never been at the beach long enough to pine for home and wait with anticipation for the next vegetable hamper to transport me there. I suspect I never will.

A Visit With Saint Nicholas

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20081218-01
20081218-02

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He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

From “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement C. Moore

“I don’t need Santa,” June declared in a determined tone as we walked down the corridor of the hotel on our way to breakfast.

“You don’t?” I questioned.

She sighed. “I’m feeling a little sad,” she admitted.

“Do you feel sad because you have to wait until this afternoon to see Santa?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

It was eight-thirty on Saturday morning. We’d arrived in Rehoboth around seven the previous evening and from June’s perspective all we had done was wait. She’d been promised sand castles on the beach, gummy butterflies at Candy Kitchen and a visit with Santa, but when we arrived in Rehoboth after a three-hour drive, we perversely insisted on going to dinner and then checking into the hotel and going to bed before any of the good stuff happened. (She was consoled by a short walk along the boardwalk to see the lights.)

Santa was the biggest attraction and since he would not be in his little house on the boardwalk until three in the afternoon, she still had a six-and-a-half-hour wait. This is June’s first year of having any idea who Santa is. Because last year was Noah’s final year of believing in Santa, we’ve had a seamless transition from pretending for one child to pretending for the other. Noah has gotten in on the fun, playing along and telling June all about Santa.

After breakfast I took June down to the beach and we made sand castles (and sand snowballs and sand monsters and sand people menaced by sand monsters). Then she wanted to take a walk on the boardwalk. I soon realized she was steering us toward Candy Kitchen. I didn’t have my wallet with me but it was only nine thirty and I didn’t think they’d be open yet so I let her walk over to the door. I thought we could peek in and I’d promise her we’d come back. But the lights were on and soon we found ourselves inside. I told June we were just looking to decide what we’d get, but we couldn’t buy anything right now. She made a beeline for the case where the gummy candy is displayed. We affirmed that they do indeed still sell gummy butterflies. When I tried to leave, her face crumpled. “But I want gummy butterflies!” she cried on the verge of tears. The cashier rescued me, offering a free sample. We left happy.

After some Christmas shopping (the alleged purpose of the trip), a lunch of leftover pizza in the hotel room and a nap, June was ready to see Santa. We headed down to the boardwalk. There were a few people ahead of us in line. June watched them go into the little house and talk to Santa. Noah offered to go before her to show her how it was done. He chatted with Santa about school and finally said he wanted “anything with a remote control.” (My mom’s got that covered.) Then he collected a reindeer hat from Santa’s bin of prizes and stepped outside.

Now it was June’s turn. She hesitated at the threshold. I lifted her over it, set her down gently inside the house, and then followed her inside. (I’d promised ahead of time I’d go in with her.) June stood a couple feet away from Santa who held out his hands and asked if she’d like to sit on his lap. I said she’d be more comfortable standing. He asked what she’d like for Christmas. June just stood there silently, looking half-awed and half-terrified. She eyed the doorway and seemed close to bolting. Santa called out to Noah, who was just outside the house, and asked him what June wanted for Christmas.

“A cake,” he answered. She’s been saying this a lot. None of us knows why.

Once June’s request was successfully transmitted, Santa offered her a reindeer hat. Out of the house with her hat in her hands, June was giddy with relief. She’d done it, she’d seen Santa and it was over. She looked at the hat proudly and said, “Santa gave it to me.” Pretty soon, she was engaging in some revisionist history, claiming, “I talked to Santa.” No one corrected her.

The rest of the weekend sped by. We returned to Candy Kitchen, shopped some more and I played a couple more times on the beach with both kids. I also got to take a long solitary walk on the beach at dusk. We enjoyed the hot tub and the ocean view in our room and watched Santa Claus is Coming to Town on the big screen television while eating Thai take-out. There was a gorgeous blood-red moon rising over the ocean on Saturday and later that evening June and I took a second tour of the boardwalk lights.

At lunchtime on Sunday we encountered Santa again at a restaurant where he was roaming through the dining room. As we were the only ones eating there at the time, he came by our table several times. Noah was talkative, but June cringed. Apparently she didn’t expect to have to screw up her courage to see Santa all over again and this time right before naptime when she can be emotionally fragile. The waitress brought paper and crayons and asked if the kids would like to write letters to Santa. We thought this might be easier to handle than face-to-face conversation. Noah said he’d already talked to him on the boardwalk, so he and Beth collaborated on a drawing of a Christmas tree instead. I asked June what she’d like from Santa. She didn’t answer right away so Beth suggested books. June agreed, and then she remembered about the cake. I wrote it all down in red and green crayon and we left the drawing and the letter in the stocking on the wall where Santa was collecting letters. The waitress gave us candy canes and we soon we were driving back to Maryland.

It was a good weekend. I made a decent start on my shopping. I felt the sand in my fingers, the water rushing over my rubber boot tops and the sun on my face. June got her sand castles, gummy butterflies and a visit with Santa.

We’ve been home several days, but she’s still processing the trip. She often mentions how big Santa is, asks when he is coming and claims she can hear him laughing. Then she demonstrates: “Ho ho ho.” At school this morning she made a drawing “for Santa” and later she asked me, “Why does Santa bring presents for children?” Then tonight at dinner she told us a story in which she was Santa and got into her sleigh and flew away. She made a large sweeping motion with her arms as she said this. Imagining being Santa seemed to make her joyous and expansive.

I don’t know if she needs Santa, strictly speaking, but he fascinates her and I hope that as time passes, her fascination grows into comfort and she realizes she has nothing to dread.

Let Freedom Ring

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The morning after Thanksgiving we took Noah to see the Liberty Bell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Bell). Last year in first grade they studied symbols of our country. That’s why we went to see the Statue of Liberty when we were in New York City to visit my dad last December. Then when we visited my mom last May for Mother’s Day, he wanted to go see the Liberty Bell, but we didn’t have time. First grade is long gone, but Noah was still interested, so on Friday morning, we left June with Mom and drove into the City of Brotherly Love.

Even with increased security, the lines were not as long as I remembered from my childhood when every out-of-town visitor and his brother wanted to go see the Bell. Either I was less patient then, or the Bell is less popular now, or we hit a lull. Once inside its spiffy new digs (http://www.nps.gov/inde/liberty-bell-center.htm), we went straight to the Bell. We took some pictures and Noah asked a ranger about the rivets at the top and bottom of the crack. Then we watched a movie about the significance the Bell has had to different people over time.

People active in a lot of liberation movements—abolitionists, suffragettes, and members of the civil rights movement—have all claimed the Bell as a symbol. I wondered briefly if the gay rights movement ever has, but if so, I’m not aware of it. (Before HRC adopted the equal sign as its logo—back when it was still HRCF—their torch logo was probably meant to evoke the Statue of Liberty. I still have a couple t-shirts that date back to those days.) My thoughts were interrupted by a clip of Martin Luther King giving the “I Have a Dream” speech; they showed the very end:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

http://www.mlkonline.net/dream.html

I’ve seen this speech so many times I expected to watch it with respect for its importance in American history and with admiration for the oratory, but not with much emotion any more, so I was surprised to find myself crying. Not just getting a little teary-eyed either, but with lines of tears streaming down both cheeks. I guess it’s going to be like this for a while. Until the reality of our first African-American President really sinks in (and who knows how long that will take?), these sudden flashes of astonishment and gratitude are just going to keep taking my by surprise.

We came back to Mom and Jim’s house for lunch and June’s nap. I lay down with her and slept deeply for forty-five minutes of her hour-long nap. (We’ve all been clobbered by an evil upper respiratory infection over the past couple weeks. It’s just the latest installment in our family’s Autumn of Infirmity. Anyway, it’s really wiped me out.) Fortified by the nap, I had the energy to leave the house again. Beth and I went to see Milk. If you exclude Wall-E, which Beth saw with Noah, and Horton Hears a Who, which I saw with him, Beth and I haven’t seen a movie in a theater since Brokeback Mountain (or was it Rent?). Either way, it’s been a long time. This was an event.

We got a bit turned around and missed the 4:30 showing. Beth was unsure about staying for the 5:40 one as it meant an extra hour of babysitting for Mom and Jim, plus putting the kids to bed, which wasn’t in the original deal. But I couldn’t get this close to seeing an actual movie in an actual theater and not do it so I called Mom and left a message with the kids’ bedtime instructions. I figured they were out at the video store. They had big plans involving making caramel apples, and getting movies and takeout pizza. I thought they’d be fine.

It has to be a coincidence, but the timing of the release of this film, which builds up to the defeat of a particularly virulent anti-gay proposition in California couldn’t be more poignant, coming so close on the heels of our recent loss of marriage rights in California after the passage of Proposition 8. On the one hand, it all seems so familiar, the long string of defeats, the raw anger, the frustration. On the other hand, the thought that we even had marriage rights in the first place would have seemed unimaginable to many of the 70s-era activists in the film. (Perhaps not to Milk, though. He was a visionary after all.) Gays and lesbians all over the United States did take to the streets again after the passage of Proposition 8, just as they did time after time in the movie. Beth’s and my days of attending every gay protest/rally/candlelight vigil have long passed, but we were planning to attend this one, even though it was at 1:30, smack dab in the middle of June’s nap. But when a cold hard rain fell that day, we reconsidered. Depriving a two-year-old of her nap and hoping she will drowse in the stroller is one thing. Expecting her to put up with all this and get drenched in the bargain seemed cruel and unusual, so we stayed home.

When we got home at 8:40, Mom and Jim had just finished putting the kids to bed. It was the first time anyone other than Beth or me has successfully put June to bed at night. She was again up at 9:50, but I had an hour and ten minutes to heat up and eat a couple slices of pizza and take a shower before I had to go lie down with her. This was an unexpected bit of freedom as well.

The inauguration is a noon on January 20, another nap disaster in the making and Montgomery County schools do not have the day off (at the time of writing—it’s become an issue of hot debate here in the ‘burbs). Beth and I attended the first Clinton inauguration so we know unless you have tickets, you don’t see anything but Jumbotron screens and the parade. Still, we are seriously considering pulling Noah out of school and June from her nap to take them down to the mall, to stand with our fellow Americans as history is made. When they’re grown up I’d like them to be able to say they heard freedom ring that January day when they were seven and a half and almost three. They may never have another opportunity like it.