This post was inspired by time spent on the Delaware Shore where my entire family gathered for my brother Proctor's wedding to LaDawn. Family memories, salt water and sun combined for this one.
This week my family gathered at the beach for my brother's wedding. The mix of sun, sea and reminiscence brought this journey to mind.
The journey started at four in the morning, maybe even earlier, the car packed with the coolers, beach clothes, paperback novels, yellow slickers and sleeping bags. In among the luggage, there were nests made of blankets, and in the front seat, there would be a bag, greasy with donuts, and two thermoses, one of milk, one of black coffee.
In the earlier years, I would have been carried out to the car in my pajamas. Later, I would walk half asleep, but on my own steam, still in pajamas, These journeys were made long before the day of car seats or mandatory seat belt laws. My older brother and I would lie like two Guinea pigs in the way back of the station wagon for the first part of the trip.
We woke only briefly, as we loaded into the car, long enough to look out at the foggy darkness, to feel the cool damp morning air, then the warm, gentle,sway of the car as we headed out of town. But with the motion, warmth, dark, and the short hours of sleep which had come before, we were soon asleep again.
When we woke for the day, we would be on the interstate, more lanes of traffic than we ever saw at home. We'd probably be on 93, near Concord, or on 128, circling Boston. The sun, just up, the low clouds streaked with light. We would squirm over into the back seat of the car if our older brother and sister let us, and eat cake donuts, (the only time in the year when we would get them), and drink milk from the plastic cup of the thermos. The car would be full of the aroma of my parents coffee.
If the timing was right, we would be headed south beyond Boston when the commuters were headed in. We'd watch the northbound lane, slow as molasses, as we shot along with the sun to our right.
Then we would Cross the Bourne Bridge. Soon we'd be driving along the streets of Barnstable, with glimpses of the sea through shade trees, big green crosswalk swatches at all of the intersections. When we would open the car windows, the smell of the sea would hit like a wave of salt, dead fish, and marina oil and gas. The cry of gulls filled the air as we would park in the lot by the dock.
Bouncing on our toes in the parking lot, we looked for Uncle Witt,coming to meet us with a big motor boat. When he arrived, we would hug, and grab coolers, duffel bags, fishing rods, and other gear for the voyage. The weathered structure of the dock rose above the motor boat as we slowly pulled away from the dock, the purr of the motor, like some large, slow cat. Barnacles, grey wood, rainbows of gas on the water glided by, and then we burst out into the open, heading across the thin band of water, wind, salt, green and blue of the sea, and the roar of the motor as the boat kicked spray and we made the crossing.
When we reached the other land, we eased in to the dock, the center of this little community. Sometimes the weathered platform and walkway to the shore were level, at high tide. At other times, we would climb a great hinged ramp to a wooden path high over exposed mud, clam flats, sea weed and tide pools.
When we stepped onto that dock, we entered a world with different rhythms, without phones or electricity, or cars. The clocks are the tide tables for clamming, berrying and boating. There's also sun for rising in the morning, slapping on tanning lotion when it feels like we might be burning, opening beer or starting dinner when the western angle looks right, or starting Coleman lanterns when the light fades too much for cards or reading.
Family lines shift. Any children in the little cluster of 8 or so houses are tossed together for volleyball, rough theater productions, running in the dunes, card games under the Coleman lanterns, or play in the water. We are untangled by last names only for meals and sleeping.
There are new laws, understandable, practical: Don't run on the dock, you'll get splinters, or could plummet to the beach below. Don't tread on the grass on the dunes. It holds the land in place, and the sand will blow away, leaving us without a home if the grass dies under our feet.
Codes of behavior have shifted. Blueberry pie plates may be licked, since we have walked miles, braved poison ivy and worked hard to pick thousands of the sweet bits of sky. Adults take showers. Children are bathed under a bucket of water, cold when the weather is cold, hot when the sun is on the hose. Laundry is "Not Done" we live in bathing suits when possible, and wear shirts, shorts, pants and sweat shirts in flagrant disregard for the rules of cleanliness we would use at home.
For our week or two in this world, our feet will be our transportation, unless we go by boat. There will be no phone calls, alarm clocks, mail, bills, or baths. Cosmetics will be Coppertone, or perhaps lemon juice to bleach our hair. Our connection will be the transistor radios, battery powered, blasting "Sunshine Superman" "Wild Thing" or "the Yellow Submarine." There is news too, I'm sure, but the link is tenuous, drowned out by gulls.
Only when we loaded our near-empty coolers, salty, smelly clothes and sunburned bodies back into Uncle Witt's boat, and made the crossing would the news of the day come into the car on the radio, with gas fumes and exhaust gradually overcoming the salt and dead fish smell of the sea. My brother and I would fight in the back seat, once more our little family unit, still loving each other, but tired from such a journey from sun, sea air and joy.
Once we have made it through the snarls of traffic at the Bourne Bridge, on 128 and 93, once we come back to the winding roads, and the familiar comforts and obligations of home, we will adjust to our old world again. Perhaps it would be easier if we could sleep through this transition as well, but this journey is made in full daylight, in a car full of dirty laundry, and hearts yearning back toward the sand, the tide clock, and the sea.
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