The Beach

The Beach. Just saying those two words brings back a flood of memories. There are many beaches in the world, but when I was growing up, those words only meant ONE place. Salisbury beach. It was the place where my family vacationed from the time I was an infant, through my young adult years. Each summer, usually in mid-July, we would pack up our cars and head up on a Friday night for 2 weeks. We only lived 25 minutes away from our vacation destination, but it felt like another world. My grandparents rented the same cottage. Every.Single.Year. For two weeks. Unless you own a vacation home, I think it is extremely rare these days for a family to vacation in the same town, in the same house, year after year. People want to travel, see the world, and do new things. Not us - We were quite happy with our beach cottage. I still smile when I remember move in night. Various members of my extended family would trickle in - some would arrive Friday night, some Saturday morning but we all were there. Sometimes the adults would commute back and forth to work during the week, but everyone stayed as long as they could, and us kids were always there.

During those 2 weeks we were beach bums - putting on our bathing suit when we woke up, and leaving them on until dinner time. The house was literally on the beach, with a large front porch that us kids loved to jump off of (when my grandfather wasn't looking of course), into the sand. About 30 feet from the porch was a wooden fence, and past the fence and over the hill was more beach and the ocean. The fence provided a very small amount of shade from its wooden slats, and I still remember those days when the sand was really really hot. We would run up the beach from the ocean, stopping at the fence and cooling our feet in that shade for just a minute, then running the rest of the way to the house. We would then dip our feet in a bucket of water to get the sand off before entering. Somehow the house still had sandy floors!

Each year until I was about 14 years old, the same family, the Murphys, rented the other half of the duplex cottage for the same two weeks as us. All of us kids were fast friends picking up each summer as though no time had passed. In the evenings we put on gymnastics shows, plays and magic shows while the adults sat and watched us from the porch, probably enjoying a few adult beverages. We would traipse in and out of each other's side of the cottage as if we were family ourselves. On Friday nights we spread our blankets out in the sand and waited for the fireworks. At that time, my brother and I were the only kids in my family, and with no cousins to play with we treated the Murphys as our cousins. There were many years I cried on that last beach day when I knew we had to say goodbye to them. They only lived in the next town over back home, but for many years we still only saw each other during those magical 2 beach weeks.

During those two weeks, there were plenty of visitors - Friends from back home would take a day off work to spend at the beach with us. The Hammans and Pineaus would always come on the same day, and the kids and Dads would spend the morning at "the center" riding the water slides. We would then stop for creamsicle ice cream cones at Wiley's on the walk home and spend the rest of the day on the beach. We built pools and sandcastles, rode the waves, and layed in the sand. On Wednesdays Uncle Bernie would arrive with his homemade ham salad. I never did taste that ham salad but he claimed it to be the best ham salad in the world, and I'm not sure he would have been allowed to enter the cottage without it. Dave and Sally always brought fruit salad. Others brought special treats and snacks - no one seemd to show up empty handed. In those days there were no cell phones - we had to walk to the pay phone to call our friends back home to coordinate visits, and we really never knew who would show up at our backdoor on any given day.

4:00 meant cocktail hour. The adults would retreat off the beach, up over the hill and set up their chairs on the sand in front of the cottage. Uncle Mike made his famous margaritas, and snacks were passed around. We soaked up the last rays of sun and then would retreat inside for dinner. After dinner, we listened to the Red Sox on the radio, and in later years, on TV. First on a small black and white TV in the living room brought from home. In later years there was a color TV with cable. We scooped ice cream into small bowls, sweated through no air conditioning, Nana taught me to play solitaire and we played 45's.

We looked forward to those few cherished nights where my parents would take us to "the center" in the late afternoon/early evening. We got ice cream at Joe's Playland, ate fried dough, cotton candy and drank fresh squeezed lemonade. We bought salt water taffy from Wiley's Candy Shoppe. We rode the bumper cars, went in the fun house, went on the Witch's Castle, played skee ball, and the lights at Jake's. And of course my Dad always played pinball. I know there were several other nights that my Dad snuck off to the center after us kids had gone to bed because, of course, he was the biggest kid of all. I remember a couple mornings coming downstairs and finding a prize on the dining room table that he had won for us the night before playing skee ball on one of his solo trips to the center.

The second Saturday we were there each year was reserved for the clam bake - lobsters and steamers and corn on the cob. We ate out on the front and back decks. My grandmother always made steak or chicken for herself, being the one who didn't like lobster. There was plenty of beer too, of course!

In later years, there were more kids as my aunts and uncle started having children of their own. In the summer of 1990, two of my aunts didn't come to the beach because they were due with my cousins Krista and Sean. This led to several birthday celebrations for those cousins at the beach as they got older. As my younger cousins grew up and the families expanded, and as my brother and I grew up as well, we stopped spending nights at the beach, but we still traveled up on several weekdays and the weekends during the 2 weeks that everyone was there. One of the first places I drove to when I got my license was the beach.

The one year I missed going to the beach was 1998, the year I moved to Baltimore. After that first summer in Baltimore, I returned to the beach every summer, as long as my family rented the cottage. When Tim and I were first dating, I brought him to the beach cottage with our friend Emil, and that is where he met my family for the first time. He stood in the ice cold water and payed football with my younger cousins. In later summers we traveled back for the Saturday clam bake and could finally enjoy the margaritas and cocktail hour.

When I think about the beach, random memories come flooding back - Nana telling guests they should help themselves because she wasn't going to make their lunch for them. Walking to Church on Sunday and stopping at 4-D on the way home to buy fresh bread for the Italian dinner my mother always made on Sundays with her homemade sauce. Walking to 4-D with the Murphys every afternoon to buy the newspaper for our grandfathers and of course treating ourselves to some candy too. The large dining room table (that our family would eventually outgrow) that had chairs on one side, but a church pew on the other. The dresser in the dining room that we used to store beach towels and sunscreen. The wooden bookcase in that same room that held our board games, magazines and books. The other dresser that served as the cupboard in the kitchen for our snacks and bread. I remember the year that there was a huge fire at the center and - even though we were 1 mile away - we could clearly see the flames. The huge and raucous trivial pursuit games where my Dad and Uncle annoyed everyone by yelling things like "pie-age!" and "Viva La France!" Looking back, I am pretty sure there were adult beverages involved in that too. My grandfather standing at his post - out in front of the cottage - directing family and friends on where they should park. Hearing the announcer on the Himalaya ride "And now we're going to go really, REALLY fast!!!" sometimes even all the way from our cottage, 1 mile away. Hanging bathing suits and towels on the close line to dry, and then running out to gather everything quickly if we heard rain coming. Going to the movies or the arcades at Hampton on the few days when it did rain. The sight of my grandfather sitting in his rocking chair on the porch, reading his book or napping.

Several years ago, my family stopped renting the cottage, when it became apparent that my grandmother was not physically able to go up and down the beach any longer. I think that in the aging process, giving up her beach days has been the hardest part for my grandmother - even harder than recovering from her two strokes. I still recall her at her happiest on the beach, laying in her lounge chair, glowing. She certainly passed on her love of the beach to me, and if the past 2 summers have been any indication, she has passed it on to her great grandson Ryan as well. We spent this past weekend at a beach in New Jersey, and the memories of the beach days of my youth were in the front of my mind. It comforts me that Tim was able to experience this special place with me, and that we can keep the beach traditions alive for years to come with Ryan. A few months ago, I referred to a quote here on the blog "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." So now, I will just close my eyes, picture "the beach" and smile...