Arrival
I set foot on the beach late Monday afternoon just as the sun was setting, after an uneventful drive to the beach. Based on the vibrant pink clouds I could see in the sky as I walked toward the beach, I may have missed the most dramatic part of it, but it was still beautiful down there, with a band of coral-colored clouds right over the horizon and puffy pale pink ones higher in the sky.
I walked up and down the boardwalk for twenty minutes or so, not lingering because it was about a mile from the boardwalk to the house and it would be cold and dark soon. The colored lights on the bandstand, on the giant Christmas tree, and all along Rehoboth Avenue had come on while I was on the beach, and it warmed my heart to see them.
Back at the rental house, we ordered takeout Japanese from a restaurant just around the corner. They didn’t have any reservations available for that night or we would have eaten there. It’s lovely inside, with koi ponds built into the floor and a lot of greenery and fairy lights. Beth and I went to pick up the food and brought it back home.
After dinner, the kids and I decorated the tree that Beth had set up and strung with lights. We have a large and eclectic collection of decorations, and it always seems as if they can’t possibly fit, but they always do. It’s our annual Christmas miracle.
Christmas Eve
I was up at six o’ clock—I often wake early at the beach. I wanted to go to see the sun rise, but I couldn’t quite rouse myself. It was cold out, just a little below freezing, plus I am not a morning person and I would have liked more sleep, but after dozing for forty-five minutes, I got up and dressed and was out of the house by seven and on the beach at seven-fifteen, just as the edge of the sun was peeping out from behind dark clouds. Then it rose and cast a line of molten gold across the silver sea. I walked along the beach and boardwalk, noting how the early morning sun turned the dry dune grass a reddish-brown color. Right before I left, I saw a huge flock of white birds, probably snow geese, flying from over the ocean, toward the land. It had been well worth getting out of bed.
We were planning to eat breakfast at Egg, but we hadn’t set a time and neither of the kids was up when I got back to the house at eight, so I had some yogurt with almond butter and banana to tide me over. We didn’t end up leaving the house until around ten, so it was a good thing I ate.
After breakfast, Beth braved the grocery store on Christmas Eve (she said it wasn’t too bad) and the kids and I started on the first baking project of the day, making cookies out of the gingerbread dough I’d made at home. We cut them into various shapes, trees and hearts being the most popular, and made four initials (B, S, and two Ns) and decorated the cookies with colored sugar, hard candies, pecans, pepitas, raisins, and dried cranberries.
Later Beth set out on a walk, and the kids and I had lunch at Grotto. We usually have our weekly Friday night pizza there when we’re at the beach, but this trip would not include a Friday night, so the kids thought we needed to have lunch there. I suggested Friday lunch right before we left town and that we not have pizza for dinner that night, but this blasphemous idea was summarily rejected. I didn’t want to spend the carbs on pizza when there were so many sweets in the house, so I had a salad and a couple mozzarella sticks. North had pizza and Noah had stromboli.
After lunch, North and I went for a walk on the boardwalk, stopping to see the Christmas decorations in the Victorian-themed Boardwalk Plaza hotel. There are a lot of nativity scenes, but we are especially fond of village with the train and little merry-go-round that Santa rides. There is also a little ballroom in which tiny mechanical figures dance. Next, I accompanied North on some last-minute Christmas shopping for Beth and Noah at two candy shops, and then we got tea and coffee at Café a-Go-Go.
At the house, Noah and I read two chapters of Dracula with breaks for me to trade texts with the property manager of the house about the non-functioning gas fireplace. (This troubleshooting exchange had begun the night before and never did result in a fire, but did net us in a $100 apology Visa gift card when we finally gave up. We ended up making do with a fireplace video that we played over and over on the tv.) Meanwhile, North made chocolate-peppermint cookies. Beth made chili and almond flour cornbread for dinner, and we watched Christmas is Here Again and Noah read “The Night Before Christmas” to us, a Christmas Eve tradition.
Christmas
North was the first one up on Christmas morning. After they emptied their stocking, they started making Christmas breakfast: an orange-cranberry loaf, eggs scrambled or fried to order, vegetarian breakfast meats, and fruit salad. It was delightful.
While North was cooking, I wrote a small batch of postcards for a special election in the Virginia Senate and took a short walk down to the post office to drop them in a mailbox.
We opened presents after breakfast. We had not really consulted with each other about what we were getting Beth, and we all went heavy on chocolate, possibly for the comfort value. She got seven dark chocolate bars and one disk, two dark chocolate barks (almond and orange) and two hot chocolate mixes (dark and caramel). When we were laughing about it, she said she did not mind at all. “I am a simple woman,” she said. She is serious about chocolate at any rate, and she did get other presents (peppermint foot lotion, a wallet, a gift certificate for e-books, etc.)
My biggest present was a new Fitbit from Beth to replace the one that broke last summer, but I also got a lot of tea. North got me my favorites from the tea shop in Rehoboth and Noah got me something called “A Feast of Tea,” a tower-shaped box with eight kinds of tea he bought in London. He also got me a book. I started to read the blurb on the back out loud but when it turned out to be about a dystopian cannibalistic future, I decided to spare my squeamish wife the description. North got both of us of a white squirrel ornament, because I’d said it would be nice to have an Oberlin ornament. Beth also got me a foot file, which I thought was kind of funny since I got her foot lotion. We both battle prickly heels in the winter and have been married long enough to get each other this kind of gift.
Noah got a portable charger, some sweets, and a pile of books. North got lavender earrings, lavender lip balm, and a lavender bath bomb, and a lot of gifts designed to keep them warm and dry during an Oberlin winter (long underwear, an umbrella—we also got them a new coat, but didn’t count that as a present). For fun, we got them an Oberlin gift certificate that can be used at a host of businesses in town.
By the time we finished opening gifts it was almost noon, but we’d had a late and large breakfast, so we weren’t hungry for lunch. We all went for a walk on the Gordon’s Pond trail. I’ve never seen as many herons as we did that day and there were also egrets and ducks on the pond and a noisy flock of geese flying overhead, continually breaking out of and reforming their V formations. Noah took a lot of pictures. There were other people on the trail who inevitably said, “Merry Christmas” and it was hard to get irritated about them assuming what holidays we celebrate since Beth was wearing a Santa hat.
There’s a path to beach off the trail parking lot so we rambled on the beach for a while. My mom called from her sister’s house in Boise, and we handed the phone back and forth as we walked around the barnacle-encrusted rocks and the piles of sea foam on the sand.
Back at the house we had lunch. North had spicy ramen noodles and orange sections while I made a board of cheeses (baked Brie and Gouda), crackers, apple slices, olives, and nuts for everyone else. We all looked at the pictures my sister posted on Facebook of all the Goth-themed presents Lily-Mei got and the whole family posed together in skull pajamas. Beth said she thought that when your parents dress up in Goth pajamas it kind of takes the rebellious edge out of it and I said I think that’s the difference between going through a Goth phase at eleven versus at sixteen.
North took a bath with their bath bomb and the rest of us read or watched tv for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to make dinner. Noah and I made spinach lasagna, garlic bread, and vegetarian sausage. We watched the Dr. Who Christmas special and Christmas was over.
Boxing Day
I was up before the sun again and went down to the beach to see another sunrise. I found a little Christmas tree, about two feet high, decorated with ornaments and candy canes, on its side on the beach. I tried to right it, but it wouldn’t stay up.
I came back to the house, ate breakfast, and North and I made plans to go back to the beach mid-morning. I had some retail errands to run on the way (but not returning anything as so many people do on the day after Christmas). My phone screen has been cracked for a year, and I keep putting off getting it repaired, though it makes me nervous whenever I’m out in the rain that moisture will get in and kill it. Anyway, I’d seen a sign in the window of a shop saying they fix phone screens, and I thought I might just get it taken care of, but I wasn’t sure if the store was closed for the season or not because it had not been normal business hours when I passed it. Turned out it was closed, so my phone is still cracked.
Next, we visited the soap shop because I wanted a bar of their pine-scented soap, partly because I like it and partly because I have often read it’s Joe Biden’s favorite from this store and I am feeling sentimental about the end of his term, like many others in town. We kept seeing “Thank You, Joe” signs around. But then to remind me of the limitations of political moderates, North spotted a Blue Lives Matter flag in the store (which Noah had reported seeing earlier and I’d looked for before going in and didn’t see). By the time North saw it, I’d already started my transaction. So, I have my soap, but I might keep away in the future.
We stopped at Café A-Go-Go and got tea and coffee again, before hitting the beach. I tried to find the little tree to show North, but someone had taken it away. We walked and then headed home for lunch, stopping at the Christmas store, not to buy anything for “for the vibes,” as North said.
That afternoon Noah and I read Dracula and then he embarked on a television binge— an episode of Queen’s Gambit with North, two of What We Do in the Shadows with me, and one of the new Star Wars show with Beth. While he and I were watching our show, Beth and North went out for ice cream.
While Noah and Beth were watching their show, I left for my third trip to the beach of the day, just in time to catch the sunset. One advantage of short winter days at the beach is later sunrises and earlier sunsets, making it easy to take in both in one day. While I was walking along the beach some seagulls flew over me and their white bellies were stained a rosy shade of pink. On my way home, I detoured to wander through the neighborhood near our house and admire people’s lights.
Back at the house, it was laundry and a dinner of leftovers and packing and stripping the tree of its ornaments, only three days after we put them on. Beth said that’s always the saddest part of leaving a Christmas vacation house.
Departure
And, sadly, it was time to leave. The next morning, we packed, swept up the needles, and vacated the house. We parked near the boardwalk so the kids and I could say goodbye to the ocean. As we walked down to the sand, Noah wondered if the water would be colder in December than in November (when we more often visit Rehoboth).
Why did the water temperature matter? To say goodbye to the ocean, the kids stand barefoot by the waterline and let twenty-four frigid waves (of whatever number corresponds to the last two digits of the year) run over their feet. When they disagreed about whether a small ripple counted as a wave, North insisted, “We have to do this right,” then wondered if they would still be doing this in the winter of 2075. Noah said it might end in a trip to the emergency room.
I don’t do this barefoot in November or December. I wear rainboots, but as often happens, a rogue wave surprised me and filled them with icy water near the end of the ritual.
We met Beth on the boardwalk where I took my boots off and turned them upside down to empty the seawater out of them and Noah attempted to remove every grain of sand from his feet before putting his shoes and socks back on. Beth asked if we needed warm beverages to warm up and after Noah made a quick stop at Candy Kitchen, we proceeded to the nearest coffeeshop. North actually got their coffee iced because that’s the only way they drink it, but I got a warm latte and Noah got hot chocolate, and then we piled into the car and drove away from the beach.
“Goodbye, see you next summer,” North said, as we drove down Rehoboth Avenue.
Three hours later, just past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, we stopped for a picnic lunch at Sandy Point State Park. We spied the Sandy Point Shoal Lighthouse in the middle of the bay and watched a container ship clear the bridge. Some hardy paddleboarders were setting out on a chilly adventure. Beth said they were “crazy” and then in her very next sentence wondered if she should get a dry suit to extend the kayaking season.
“The bay is nice, too,” I said as we walked back to the car.
“The bay is great,” she said. “I love the bay.”
So, we will be back to both, paddling in the spring, and swimming in the summer. I hope you get to do some things you love in the coming year as well, whatever it may hold.