Let's just say that so far, this has been a challenging year for me. I am not usually the type of person that gets stressed out easily or becomes overwhelmed by life, but this past year, I will admit, has been a tough one for me.
On February 4th, my 86 year old grandmother, the matriarch of our family, passed away. This event was, and still is, very emotional for me. I identified with my grandmother's personality so much. Her and I were alot alike. I hate referring to her in the past tense.
My grandmother and I were both the same height, possessed the same turned up nose and deep, blue eyes. "If you don't want the truth, then don't ask either one of us." That is how I have always thought of our closest similarity. We shared that trait. Let's just call it the ability to be "direct".
Unfortunately, intense family discord and my own medical challenges quickly followed the passing of my grandmother, with the peppering of close personal relationships being tested, the questioning of friendships and their longevity, and ultimately the over extension of myself and my abilities. Needless to say, by the time the date of July 2nd rolled around, the start of my week long vacation, I was more than ready for it.
I have not had a week long vacation since my honeymoon in 1995. For real. As a family, we go away for a 3 day weekend every Labor Day to Vermont. Last summer, my kids and I went to Cape Cod for a few days with some friends. My husband, my kids and I jaunted down there last Memorial Day weekend, as well. But the four of us have NEVER been on a week long vacation together. EVER.
So, needless to say. I was due. We were all due.
As a child, I spent all of my vacations, during the first week of August, on Cape Cod. "The Cape" as we Massachusetts people call it. Below the elbow, if you will. Argueably, what most life long Cape-goers will insist is the 'real Cape'. The lower part of the arm of Massachusetts. Eastham is a quiet, almost sedate, Cape Cod town with minimalized commercialism and not a chain store in sight. Except for a very snobby looking Dunkin Donuts, with an inconspicuous sign over the door. A door that has a line flowing out of it at 6:00 am every morning. This particular altered Dunkin Donuts does not make a single breakfast sandwich and only offers 6 varieties of donuts. Just as long as they have coffee. That's all that really matters.
I was thrilled to be going back again. I have the fondest memories of my life there. There are two types of beaches on the Cape. The 'Bay' side and the 'Ocean' Side. The Bay side has a very distinct low tide and high tide. Low tide has many sand bars and tidal pools with all kinds of hidden sea treasures. The sandbars and tidal pools go on and on, with many opportunities for unearthing razor clams, cohogs, crabs of all varieties, abandoned shells, scattering minnows and many other fantastic salty finds. The sand is rougher on the Bay side, pebbly, and the water is warmer. The waves are not impressive.
The Ocean side offers very little change in its appearance during low tide vs. high tide. Just a few feet of difference in the shoreline of the 'going out' and 'coming in' of the ocean. The waves are bigger and the water is colder. The sand is finer and powdery. Great for toes.
We were Bay side people. I always longed for low tide. The lowest of the low tides. It was my salvation. At the precise moment that the ocean water would begin to receed, I would follow it out and be gone for hours, with my bucket. By myself. I was always the truest version of myself out there, and ever since I stopped going to the Cape every summer, I have lost a part of who I am.
My memories of these summers are vivid: Lobsters and steamers. My mother cemented into a 3 fold lounge chair with a brown belly, a red plastic cup in her hand, and a bright, royal blue cooler by her side. My father always muttering about rip tides and throwing us into the waves like beach balls. My brothers both in diapers and in play pens. Sand bar wiffle ball. Sunburns that crippled you. Great friends. New Cape friends that you met on the beach, sharing a raft. My great-granparents teaching me how to play cribbage. We were all there one summer, hovered around the Cape Cod Times, as we learned that Elvis had died. My father's green Nova with a CB radio. Cape traffic on the Sagamore Bridge. The salt, the sand dunes, the sand in your bathing suit and often, the sand in your sandwich.
I was elated to hear that a childhood friend of mine and her husband, who I had also known from high school, and their two children were vacationing in Eastham the same week as us. We planned to get our families together while on the Cape. Kristine and I shared a fun friendship and an amazing summer together, when I was 13 and she was 14. We were both a little on the boy crazy side. Her more than me. (just kidding, Kristine).
The first few days on the Cape were spent just as I had planned. We connected with a friend of ours and her son, who were also spending time in Eastham. We lounged by the ocean, swam, treasure hunted through low tide and played games on the beach with a beautiful sunset as our backdrop. The next few days, we did more of the same. Filled it in with fried clams, miniature golf, t-shirt shopping and board games. I could tell that my husband and kids had moments of boredom, and part of me became saddened by this as I questioned whether or not this vacation was built for them or just built for me.
Kristine and her husband asked us over for cocktail hour one evening. We joined them, and met their beautiful children and some of their friends. They had a house full. Our Cape cottage was relatively quiet. Not theirs. I loved it! Part of the magic of the Cape, is the people that you meet while there.
One of Kristine's friends was also a lifelong Cape goer. She had always come to Eastham as well. She told me a story about the first time she vacationed on Eastham on her own many years ago, with her husband and their two small children, who at that point in time, were pretty much both in diapers. She had me almost in tears, laughing, as she recounted the horror of this vacation that she had once so idealized. She described her kids as miserable, with sand in every crevace, crying constantly. She had resorted to calling her father at home, playing on the fact that she was 'daddy's little girl', asking him to please come down to the Cape and join them, secretly hoping that he would valiantly scoop up her two unhappy, screaming babies in his arms so that she and her husband could relax and enjoy. He did come down to Eastham, but recommended that she have a gin and tonic and just learn to cope. He explained that he had been right where she is now. On an unruly vacation with cranky kids, counting the minutes until cocktail hour and even the long ride home.
Funny, I'm sure my parents had those moments, too. But somehow, the overall emotion that washes over me is that these vacations were perfection in motion. I am quite sure that I am not the only one who is disillusioned.
Our days in Eastham continued on with kites flown on the sandbars at low tide against orange and hot pink skies, long walks on the beach, fireworks, a visit to Provincetown (or 'P town' as it is called) for shopping, monument climbing, and parasailing. It felt like home to me. I was in my element.
Along the way, we met a little girl, Kendall, on Martha's Vineyard that stole our hearts. She danced and sang for us on the ferry back to Woods Hole and within 10 minutes of our meeting, she started calling me 'Mommy' and told me that she loved me. She hugged my children as we were all leaving the ferry and told us she wanted to come home with us. I wanted Kendall to come home with us, too. She had to have been one of the most open-hearted human beings I have ever met.
My children and I met a older couple from Chicago, now living in Las Vegas, that were both school teachers. We had struck up conversation with them when my son and I offered to give up our seats so that they could sit, instead of stand,on an over-crowded shuttle bus. They were lovely. Just really good, hard working people. You could just tell. We talked about 8th grade math, raising children, and they told us about their worldly summer travels.
Chance meetings of lives just crossing for a few moments.
Since my grandmother passed away, and maybe even before that, I have slowly felt myself closing off to the people around me. Distancing myself, feeling incapable of sharing any part of myself with others. The feeling of not wanting to put forth the effort to connect was starting to infiltrate into my daily life. The events of the late winter made me bitter. Unavailable. Robotic. Non-tolerant.
Since returning back to my home with my family, and reflecting on my time on the Cape and the people that we met and that I reconnected with, I have come to the realization just how off course I have strayed.
Just like tides that ebb and flow, so similiar are the relationships that we build in our life. Some get washed out to sea and some weather well as sea green beach glass, smooth around the edges. It is the people in our lives, that always make a difference. Each like a grain of sand. A grain of sand can be a nagging nuisance in a crevace or the remnants of sturdy a rock, tumbled over and over again by the changing tides.
