Our Beach

My older son found a box full of old photographs that he took when he was a kid. (He'll be 28 in a little over a month.) He's been scanning them into his computer and emailing them to us. One of the pictures he found was one I've been thinking about since I took my Cape Cod vacation last fall. My parents, my kids, their dad and I rented a house in Harwich Port for 5 summers, 1988-1992. During April school vacation in 1993, we went down to visit the Cape - eat at Seafood Sam's, drive by the Chatham Lighthouse, and walk on the beach. We knew we wouldn't be coming back the following summer. I was feeling very sad about that, and my mood was somber. I'm not sure who wrote this in the beach, but:

It's our initials, followed by "This is OUR BEACH." I thought that maybe somehow by laying claim to it, we'd get some good karma and magically convince the Universe to arrange for us to stay there again. But the Universe wasn't paying any attention, and our days of renting on the Cape while the kids were small were over.

Almost every summer, we manage to make a day trip (I go, accompanied by one, two or three kids, whoever else is available). We eat at Seafood Sam's, visit the Chatham lighthouse, and drive around our old neighborhood. Sometimes we walk on the beach. But we go back to our homes near Boston at the end of the day.

Last fall, I finally managed an overnight visit to the Cape when I spent four wonderful days right down the beach from "Our Beach". I talked about it here. I have pictures of the vacation on all of my computers as wallpaper, and they warm my heart as I think of the place where I feel most myself.

Since then, I realized something about "Our Beach." Even though we don't stay there every year, it's still "our beach", and it always will be. It's in our hearts, a part of our lives. We belong there, and the beach knows it. It recognizes us as its own. Odd as that sounds, I feel it very strongly. When I walk there, I'm whole. The little girl who ran ahead of her mother and grandparents, the young mother who delighted in watching the hermit crabs in the tidal pools with her small children, the older mother who brought her growing kids to this place even after they couldn't rent there any more - they all walk with me. That's why I keep going back. All the best pieces of myself can be found there.

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 4

October 16, 2008

I have to go home today. I want to stay here forever, but no vacation lasts forever. I have to go back to earning money to pay for more vacations someday...

It's sunny today, at last. I hope I can do a major beach walk before checkout time, 11 a.m. I'll bring my camera, and with any luck, I won't get caught by high tide. If it was at 1 yesterday, it won't be at 9 today. I think it's around 6 1/2 hours between tides, which would make high tide later than that. I could look it up online, if I had an internet connection...

Last night I went to the Impudent Oyster in Chatham for supper. We used to go there back in the 80s and 90s. My parents and my sister liked it. Well, it's nice enough, I guess, but it's horrendously overpriced and just a touch pretentious. I had steak au poivre, which was delicious. I followed it up with a cup of coffee. The whole experience, including tip, was just over $40. YIKES. Imagine what it would have been if I'd had wine... I'm still feeling bad about it - not just guilt, but regret for what else I could have bought with the extra $25-$30 I spent on that meal. All for an experience that I could have done without. (Whacks self mentally on head.)

I had gone early to avoid the crowds and was back in my room before 7. I then spent four hours watching TV. I was kind of in a red-meat stupor - but I also got a great start on my new hat that I'm knitting. As I said, it's a very complex pattern, and I now know that I can do it. I wanted to make sure before I left the yarn-store ladies behind!

I was thinking about how, when I walk the beach alone here, I'm never really alone. I'm walking with myself as a little girl, running ahead of my mother and grandparents with my little sister, feet always dancing. And I'm walking with my own kids, the baby slung in a hip carrier while the older kids run ahead of my mother and me, just as I did. My personal heaven will look a lot like the strip of beach between Allen and Wychmere Harbors. Sun, clouds, moon, stars, whatever the lighting, it's always my beach, and it always will be. I plan to come back here and repeat this vacation next year.

Later. Allen Harbor has been achieved! Hallelujah!

It's a beautiful sunny morning. The walk seemed short; it was no time before I saw my first landmark. I took lots of pictures this time, since I actually had my camera with me! It was low tide, probably about dead low, which left a lot of beach for walking. I'm going to share a few of these pictures.



I actually took this one to show a little crowd of birds (terns? sandpipers? something else?), but it's a good shot of the expanse of beach.



This is the same part of the beach where the waves were washing up against the seawall yesterday. Look at the difference today!



That's the jetty at the entrance to Allen Harbor. I used to love to run out to the end when I was a little girl. I didn't attempt it today; my knees are still too unstable. Who knows, maybe by next summer I can run out to the end again - or at least walk sedately there!

My knee bothered me some on the way back. The beach was slanted, with the higher side being on my left, so the leg with the new knee had to pretend to be shorter than the other one. But I got back and sank down on the bed gratefully, my cold pack on my knee.

It's almost 10:30 now, and I have to be out of here by 11, so I'm shutting down now. This vacation has been everything I hoped it would be, and I can't wait to come back to the Cape!

My Cape Cod Vacation, Part 1

I was fortunate enough to have last week off. After the summer I had, I thought I deserved a real vacation, one that didn't involve lying in a narcotic stupor with my feet elevated and an ice pack strapped to my knee. I wanted to go alone, not make this a family excursion. So I made reservations in a seaside inn and drove off to Cape Cod.

I had a wonderful time. I didn't have internet access while I was down there - a mixed blessing; I've gotten used to checking the weather, looking up things in Wikipedia, etc. whenever I want. But I couldn't possibly check my work email, either!

I kept a blog, with the plan of posting it when I got back. I'm going to do it in daily installments, with some editing and the occasional picture.

October 14, 2008

My Harwich Port Blog

Or at least that's my intention as I start to write this. It's something after 11 at night, and I'm slumped on my bed (my intention was to be propped up comfortably, but that doesn't seem to be working). So I moved to the ditzy little round table, the one with the plastic lawn chairs. Other than those, though, this room seems to be well furnished.

My trip almost didn't happen. Well, I guess that's not really true; I would have gotten down here if I had to crawl. But yesterday, when I was fighting to make myself walk properly up the cellar stairs, my right knee (that's the good one) gave out on me and I fell to both knees at the top of the stairs. I had sprained it badly. It's better today, and it didn't bother me when I was driving. But I felt for awhile that the Powers of the Universe were conspiring against me.

I arrived in Harwich Port (as it says on the map; there's a mixed opinion about whether it should be one or two words. I always think of it as Harwichport) at about 12:55 p.m., roughly 2 hours and 10 minutes after I left home. I wasted most, maybe all, of that 10 minutes looking for a Dunkin Donuts in Weymouth and, after finding one, trying to find Route 3 again. I thought I knew where it was. Oh, well, this is New England; you can't travel more than a mile without passing a Dunkin. There's even one here in Harwichport, where the Christy's market used to be, in the strip mall where the A&P was when I was growing up, the one my sister and I (ages 7 and 5) were allowed to walk to, even though it meant crossing busy Lower County Road.

Check-in time for the Sandpiper Beach Inn is 3 p.m., so I had a couple of hours to kill. I went to an amazing yarn shop in the center of town, in a new building next to the municipal parking lot. I think it might have been a furniture store at one time; that's what my dim memory is telling me. Anyway, it's been broken down into a series of shops, some of which haven't been rented out yet. The yarn shop, Adventures in Knitting, was displaying a lot of knitted goods made up in variegated yarn. I loved them and knew I had to make something! I bought yarn, a circular needle, and a pattern to make myself a hat in a very complex pattern where the strips of knitting appear to be woven together. I'll take a picture of it when it's done. It's made in a Japanese yarn called Noro Kureyon (which I'm willing to bet is Japanese for "crayon"). I chose a purple, blue and green blend (no surprises there; most of my wardrobe is purple, blue, or green).

After that, I wanted to get some lunch, and that's when I discovered that most of the downtown restaurants either closed after Labor Day or closed before 1:30. I ended up going to Seafood Sam's, a favorite family restaurant which I was saving for Friday, when my sons are coming down for the day. I got the lobster bisque, which was just as good as I remembered it.

I drove up Route 28 to Chatham, turning around at the traffic light by the Unitarian-Universalist church. I'm saving the center for tomorrow, when I can give it the serious attention that it deserves! I noticed that some of the places we used to go aren't there any more, and others had closed already for the season. Marion's Pie Shop is still there, though, and was doing a great business. After I drove by, I realized that I probably should have gone there for lunch. I don't think there's actually a restaurant on the premises, but I think I could get soup and maybe a slice of pie to take out. It's worth a try, anyway; I think I'll give it a shot tomorrow.

The nursery where Mom and Dad bought a hydrangea in about 1958 is still there. It's an Agway now. Interesting, the things that stick in my mind.

It was about 2:40 by then, so I drove over to the Bank Street town beach parking lot (right outside the Sandpiper Beach Inn) and read the Boston Globe until it was late enough to check in. The manager is very young, about my kids' age (somewhere between 20 and 27). He lives on the premises with his little long-haired Dachshund, Louie, who gave my shoes a thorough sniffing. Probably smelled the cats. The office has windows on three sides; it's like being on a boat. He told me that they're going to turn it into another room and put the office where his apartment is now.

The place is really more like what we used to call a motel (it's a row of attached rooms). The part I'm in has a second story, but the part across the grassy lawn doesn't. The cars park in an adjacent lot. My room has a king-sized bed, which is overkill in my case. The room is tiny and the furniture typical motel stuff, all except for the aforementioned white plastic lawn chairs at the table. There's a mini refrigerator and a microwave in each room. There are windows at the front and back, and outside the back door there's a small enclosed terrace, exclusively for this room.

After I unpacked, I changed to shorts and sandals and went down to the beach to wade in the water. I walked along the beach towards where we used to go. I didn't go that far; I didn't want to overdo it on my first day, and my sprained knee was aching. I hope to get down to Allen Harbor before I leave. It's been windy ever since I got here. I was cold on the beach. I passed a couple walking in long pants, sneakers and jackets; they seemed to be looking at me as if I was crazy. Not crazy, just my first trip to the Cape this summer, and I'm going to wade no matter what!

[The actual blog blathered on a little longer, but I think I'll stop here for today.]