Category Archives: Summer Memories Series

Today I like: Chasing Fireflies. Cutest kids clothes ever
Not So Much: Wearing my glasses

As the packing madness continues over here, it’s time for episode three in my summer memories series. This one is harder: age thirteen. Possibly the most awkward year of my life! Really, it was that bad. Also a difficult time to capture…trapped between childhood and what I (at the time) fancied to be a much more grown-up version of myself.

The Rules

Gammy has lots of rules. When you have been living with them your whole life you get used to them. They’re just what you do at the beach. It’s when you try to explain them to someone else that they seem really weird.  Since I’m thirteen now I’m allowed to have friends from home stay sometimes for the weekend. It’s the best because we’re allowed to walk up to the boardwalk in the center of town by ourselves at night with NO PARENTS. Sometimes we go in the shops or the arcade but mostly we just sit up on the boardwalk and see if we can meet any cute boys. There are boys from all over, places like Pennsylvania and Dover and sometimes even New York. (We stay away from the local boys because they’re weird. They all have names like Chuck and Larry and live in trailers. Dad says they come from a small gene pool.) So anyway, all my friends want to come down. But I have to fill them in on the rules first.

Most of the rules have to do with food. Since Gammy grew up in the Depression, they like, never had anything to eat. So she is really freaked out about what, when and how much everyone eats.  Major Rule Number One: you can never go into the fridge without asking. If you do peek you can’t even tell what is in there because there are like a million plastic bags and tupperware containers with tiny bits of food in them, since Gammy never throws anything away. If someone burns some toast at breakfast, even if it’s like totally black, she’ll eat it and say, “This is just the way I like it.” I guess anything tastes okay if you slap enough butter on it.

My mom told me one time before I was born she got really hungry in the middle of the night. Everyone was sleeping so she snuck downstairs. She found this one chicken wing wrapped up in tin foil in the back of the fridge. She thought no one would ever miss it, right? So she ate it like as fast as she could and even stuffed the bag way down in the bottom of the trashcan to like, get rid of the evidence. But the next day she was almost totally busted. My great-grandma Mimi opened the the fridge and the first thing she said was, “Who ate my chicken wing?”

Mom acted all innocent but she never tried that again. “I’d rather starve,” she said.

So speaking of toast, breakfast is served at exactly 8:ooam every morning. By that time Gammy has rode her bike to Mass and to get the paper. She is not going to wait for anyone to sleep in, so if you want to eat you better be up. Breakfast on most days is Puffed Wheat cereal, which is pretty gross, but on Sundays she goes all out. After implementing Major Rule Number Two (everyone must attend Mass on Sunday even if you haven’t been since your own Baptism), Gammy makes a real Sunday breakfast: pancakes, bacon, and some country sausage that totally makes your mouth water. The weird thing is, it’s kind of like mini-breakfast. The pancakes are like little sand dollars, and the each slice of bacon or piece of sausage is cut into eensy weensy bits. Gammy fills up a bunch of these little orange juice glasses right up to the rim so you have to balance like a tight-rope walker to get to your seat without spilling it all over the floor. Watch out if that happens. You’re out of luck. No more for you.

At every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, you better know she is watching everyone. She wants to see who takes food first, who takes the biggest piece of meat, who takes the last bit of anything and who leaves anything on their plate. You never know if you are making her happy by eating a lot and showing her you like it or making her mad because you’re a selfish pig who does not leave enough for everyone else. My sister Mary drives Gammy crazy because even though she is almost the youngest she has no shame. She picks through all the chicken at dinner and takes the biggest piece for herself. She eats five ears of corn even if there are twenty people eating. I can see Mom watching Gammy watching Mary and Mom is sweating. Mom always tries to tell Mary, “Other people have to eat.”

Mary could not care less. She takes what she wants. She is a brave kid.

Major Rule Number Three is everyone must be on the beach from 9am-5pm. Even when we were little babies we had to stay out there all day and take naps right under the umbrella. Mom would wrap whichever baby was sleepy in a towel and walk up and down the beach until the baby konked out. Then she would stick the towel baby bundle on a blanket in the shade. The funny thing is, Mom says that even with all the kids running around screaming, and the parents screaming at the kids and even the seagulls screaming, those babies would just snooze away under there. Gammy says they used to put a bit of whiskey in the baby bottles in her day but I don’t think my mom would have gone for that. Maybe it was the ocean air or something, who knows.

Most of my friends are freaked out then they hear you can’t even go up to the house to pee. You have to do it in the ocean. My grandfather Boppy says, “There’s a lot of water in there. A little more won’t hurt.”

The only time you can go up to the house is for number two. Even then you can’t go up to the main part of the house. You have to use the teeny little bathroom in the basement where the window is so low I’m afraid someone will walk by and catch a glimpse of me scrunched in there on the toilet. I try to hide behind Gammy’s flowery bathing suits and straw hats hanging on hooks next to the toilet like a fashion spread from the old lady section of the Sears catalog. It smells like old sunscreen and worn-out air freshener in there.

It sucks, but I guess I don’t blame Gammy for sending us all out of the house all day. I mean, we’re all like, really loud and there are a lot of us so I would probably send us out all day too. But it would be nice to be able to use the big bathroom instead of picking between the ocean and hiding behind all that polyester.

Major Rule Number Three that is just for us teenagers (sometimes I still can’t believe I’m a real teenager now!) is DO NOT BE LATE. Since I’m thirteen I have to be in by 10pm. It takes me and my friends a while to get ready to go out because we have to do our hair and makeup and pick out a good outfit. We like to be kind of the same, but kind of different, you know? Like if my friend Allison is all dressed up in a dress I don’t want to look like a slob in shorts. Last time she was down we both wore jeans with surfing tee shirts. She wore Quicksilver and I wore Body Glove. We both roll up our pants legs and tee-shirt sleeves, but I have these really cool ankle bracelets that I made myself. We help each other with our hair and makeup. She uses blue mascara but I like green better. So we are kind of alike but kind of different, see what I mean? Oh, and neither of us wear shoes because no one up on the boardwalk wears shoes. Our feet get so black from walking on the street that it doesn’t matter how much we scrub them. They stay black pretty much all summer.

So anyway, being home at ten is no biggie, because we’re up in town before dark and have plenty of time to walk around. Like I said before we’re mostly up there to meet boys. Sometimes it takes a while to meet them because they just keep walking past us a million times. It can even take a couple of nights before they actually say anything. I don’t like to be the first to say “hi” because I never really know what to say. Besides isn’t the boy supposed to say “hi” first?

That’s another reason I like to have Allison come stay. She always knows what to say. Mom says she’s a flirt. She gets all glare-y when she says that, like it’s a bad thing. But I’m totally jealous because I suck at flirting. Maybe if I watch Allison long enough I’ll learn how she does it, or maybe she’ll just get enough cute boys around us that there will be a few extras who don’t care if I never say anything.

Sometimes when I don’t know what to say it’s good to have an ice cream. I try to think of something while I’m eating and it seems like I’m just really into my Rocky Road. I used to get cones but you look like such a dork slurping away on an ice cream cone that now I get it in a cup instead. A few times my friends and I have walked down on the beach with the boys we met. I even kissed this boy from Boston earlier this summer. I still have not gone under the boardwalk with any boys. I remember what my older cousins used to do under there. I drank a beer once with Leigh so I’m not worried about that. It doesn’t even taste good, and maybe I could just dump it in the sand and no one would know. But I am scared some guy will want me to suck on his neck or something.

We usually have to book it home a few minutes before ten. It’s no fun with no shoes running down the street stepping on all kinds of rocks and thistles and beer caps. The beach is not much better because of all the fiddler crabs waiting to pinch your toes and holes dug by little kids that can break your ankle. The sand gets freezing cold and the tide comes in and that’s freezing, too. It soaks the legs of my jeans and they get all stiff and salty where I rolled them up. Then Gammy gets annoyed because she has to wash them and that’s a waste of water.

It’s worth breaking an ankle to be on time. Gammy told me that if I’m late I’ll have to go to town with my dad and the younger kids. I’d rather stay home then go up there with them. My dad is way too embarrassing the way he whistles so loud and has to talk to like every person we pass, even if he doesn’t even know any of them. The grown-ups in my family are all still awake when we get home so there’s no sneaking in. I know Leigh and my other cousins sneak out after everyone finally goes to sleep but I’m too much of a chicken for that. Maybe next year I’ll try it, but most thirteen-year-olds aren’t allowed to go out at night by themselves and hang out with boys from who knows where. I’m not going to screw myself by being late or sneaking out.

So, after I fill my friends in on the big rules I have to fill them in on the little ones. First, always make your bed as soon and you get out of it. Then, any time you come into the house from the beach or town you better rinse your feet off outside in the shower stall. Gammy has the only beach house in the world with no sand in it because no one would dare come inside without making sure every speck of sand is washed off. Next, make sure you hang your towel on the line after your shower. And speaking of showers, there are lots of rules about them too. First of all, you have to shower outside. Only Gammy and Boppy are allowed to shower inside. It’s something about the sand in the drains, I think.

Since there are usually like twenty people at the house you’re only allowed to be in the shower for about two minutes, because if not there won’t be any hot water left. I always try to get up to the shower first. If you wait around you have to stand there forever looking at everyone else’s feet under the wall and thinking about how you might as well go rinse off with the old ice water from the beer cooler. Sometimes one of us will yell out, “I call first shower!” but only when Gammy is not around. I think this annoys her because it shows her how selfish we all are, just like when you take the biggest pork chop.

I guess the last rule is that you never talk back to Gammy or even disagree with her. We do exactly what she says and do it pleasantly even if when our own parents ask us to do the same thing we roll our eyes and say, “Whatever.” But I don’t have to tell my friends that rule. They all feel lucky to be asked to come stay so they are really, really polite. Plus I think when they meet Gammy they can just tell she is someone you have to listen to, even if she is not saying anything at all.

 

 

 

Today I like: Solitude in hotel
Not so much: Fear of bedbugs in hotel

Here’s the next installment of my summer memories series. This one is a bit longer, because, as the title says, we packed a lot into a day at my grandmother’s beach house. I’ve aged. A whopping ten years old now! Do you think I kept a handle on my childish voice while maturing the narration? If not, well, be easy on me.

A Long Day

I always wake up early at Gammy’s house, but I like to lie in the bed for a while. I listen to my cousins and my sister and brother sleeping around me. The windows are open and I think that the sound of them breathing is like the ocean, in and out, in and out, in and out. It’s a nice sound but even that can’t keep me still for long. I stick my legs straight up and push hard on the lump above me, my cousin Matt sleeping in the top bunk. The bunk beds are so old that the top mattress sags like a hammock. My dad and my uncles slept in these bunk beds about a million years ago and I bet they were sagging even then.  I remember when I could not reach that far but now I’m ten, which is the first age with two numbers, 1-0. My legs have grown a lot and I can give him a really good kick. He yells, “Quit it!” and throws a pillow over the edge of his bed but it misses me and lands on the blue and green shag carpet.

Everyone else groans and rolls around, especially my older cousins, Teddy and Jason. They’re both tired because they stay out super late at night. Sometimes the rest of stay up until they get home so they can tell us about all the bad things they’ve been doing, like drinking beer under the boardwalk and stealing change from the parking meters. But usually we’re asleep when they get home and they’re asleep when we wake up so all I ever see of them these days is their shaggy hair sticking out from under the covers. That’s okay with me because sometimes they scare me a little bit. I hear Gammy and Mom talking all the time about how they are delinquents. I’m not sure exactly what that means but I know it has to do with the parking meters and the beer and something about the weeds. I thought Boppy always took care of the garden but Gammy said that Teddy and Jason are smoking the dirty weed all the time so maybe they’re helping out. It seems like Gammy should be happy they’re helping but I can tell she is angry so I avoid them. They’re so old they don’t want to play with us anymore anyway.

Jason yells, “Shut up, some of us are trying to sleep!” and pulls his pillow over his head. I peek across the room at Mary and she is awake too. Matt is also awake since I kicked him so the three of us go downstairs. We have to pick our way around the bunk beds. That’s one of the best things about Gammy’s house, all of us cousins get to sleep in the same room, so it is never scary. If a vampire or a ghost or a werewolf came into the room someone would probably wake up, or at least you have a good chance the monster would eat someone else.

None of our parents are awake yet because they all stay up late sitting on the porch drinking and talking and laughing. We open up the hall closet, where Gammy keeps some toys and books for us. All the toys are as old as the bunk beds, from when dad and my uncles where little. Some of the toys seem pretty silly, like the wind-up apple that swallows pennies and spits them back out at you, but the books are great. There are little kid books like Where the Wild Things Are and Harry the Dirty Dog that I like to read to my baby brother, and also some bigger kid books like the Hardy Boys and even some Nancy Drew. I read while Mary and Matt play with old GI Joe’s and a tank.

Soon Gammy comes in and says “Good morning, Darlings!” and we say “Good morning!” back to her. She’s carrying the paper and has on one of her church outfits, white pedal pusher pants with a shirt with big purple flowers all over it and nice sandals. She can’t wear dresses to church on Saturday because she rides her bike. It’s not good for old ladies to ride bikes with their dresses flying up for all the world to see. When we drive over together to St. Ann’s for Mass on Sunday we all look fancy, but I think that no matter how fancy we look the priest knows that all my uncles are trying not to fall asleep because they stayed up so late the night before. The priest says “The BODY of Christ, the BODY of Christ,” so loud that at least it keeps them awake during Communion. My uncles whisper, “Hair of the dog,” when they go up to get the wine. I know it’s probably not right to make jokes at Communion but what can I say to them? I am only ten.

I’m glad today is Saturday and not Sunday so only Gammy goes to church, like she does every day. She pours our cereal in plastic bowls and calls up the stairs that it’s breakfast time, come and get it. People start appearing out of the different bedrooms, yawning and stretching and rubbing their eyes.  The grown-ups slurp coffee and smoke cigarettes and stare into space waiting for the coffee to wake them up. I do not know how grown-ups can drink coffee and smoke cigarettes when it’s already so hot outside. I sweat just looking at them with all that extra hotness.

Jason and Teddy are the only ones still sleeping and Gammy yells to them, “Eat now or forever hold your peace!”

One of them yells back, “We’re still sleeping!”

Gammy scowls and says, “Let them go hungry.”

Teddy stays in bed but Jason finally comes out with puffy eyes and a towel wrapped around his neck. Jason does all kids of weird things these days but the towel is weird even for him. Gammy says, “Take that towel off your neck at the table.”

Jason says, “No.”

Matt and Mary and I stop eating our cereal and look at each other over our bowls. Gammy turns and just stares at Jason.

Jason says again, “No,” but his head sinks a little deeper into his towel, so it looks like the towel is trying to swallow him.

Gammy walks to him and whispers something in his ear that no one else can hear. We all watch, even the other grown ups have noticed something is happening. Jason pulls the towel off his neck and I stare some more. I wonder if he ran into some bad jelly fish in the ocean because he has lots of big red and purple bruises all over his neck. My Uncle Dave makes a funny coughing noise in his throat and my dad says, “Way to go, Jay.”

Gammy sniffs loudly and pours his cereal, and he hunkers over it, scarfs it down in about two seconds and leaves the table. Later I will tell my cousin Leigh about Jason and the jellyfish and she will sigh. She tells me those marks aren’t stings, they’re hickies.

“What are hickies?”

“Its means some girl was sucking on his neck really hard.”

This does not make any sense to me but Leigh is thirteen so I believe her.

After Jason disappears, my dad goes back to puffing away and looking at the sports page. “Dad,” I say, “We have to plug in.”

He keeps reading.

“Dad, come on, we have to plug in,” and he still keeps reading. “DAAAD!”

“WHAT?” He glares at me over his glasses.

“We have to go plug in the umbrella.”

“Okay, Okay, Okay. Y’all are a bunch of slave drivers.” He snuffs out his cigarette in the big clamshell ashtray and pushes back his chair.

We scramble to grab our bathing suits while our dads gather all the stuff we need for the day: umbrella, beach chairs, bag of beach toys, towels, boogie boards, cooler of beer. Everyone has to carry their own towel around their neck and something else. I grab one of the boogie boards because it is easy to sling over your shoulder as you walk over the dune. The lifeguards are still setting up so it is not quite nine o’clock. We always have to get out early because we have a special spot where the Alexanders have always sat since the days when there were only three houses on Fourth Street. If we don’t get there early some tourists who don’t know better might take it.

We spread out our stuff so that we will have plenty of space, because there is nothing worse than when someone comes and sets up right on top of you and blocks your view. Of course all the families we know that have old house know this is rude. They also know it’s rude to kick sand on people as you walk by, or shake out your towel so the sand flies all over everyone’s stuff, or feed the seagulls so they swarm around trying to steal everyone’s food and pooping everywhere. There are all kinds of ways to be rude at the beach. My mom and Gammy have been teaching me about them forever.

Once we’re set up I hear the lifeguards blow the long whistle that means they’re watching us. All us kids sprint to the water. It’s freezing and I gasp when it hits my legs but I don’t care. I run straight through the surf and dive through the next wave. When I was small I was afraid of the ocean. I would stand on the sand with Gammy and cry anytime my parents went swimming. I don’t know why I was ever scared because now I think the ocean is the greatest place on earth. It’s much better than a pool because it is always moving and changing. I ride the waves up and down. I practice my summersaults and back flips. I pretend I’m a mermaid or a dolphin, or maybe a shipwreck victim floating on a piece of my sunken ship, which is really my boogie board. I can even dive under the biggest waves after they crash and the water is rolling and churning like it’s boiling in a pot. My cousins taught me to swim down to the bottom to get below the chop. I swim straight and stiff like a board until it passes.

We splash each other and play keep away with an old football, and everyone tries to dunk everyone else. I scream when my cousins swim under the water and grab my legs, because even though I know it’s one of them it could also be a shark. We yell to my dad and my two uncles, “Come in, come in!”

They yell back, “We’re not hot enough yet!”

Another thing I don’t understand about grown-ups is why they have to be a certain hotness to get in the water. It’s always hot at the beach. The water is way more fun than sitting sitting sitting on your butt in a beach chair.

Finally we see Dad and my two uncles walking towards the water. They dive in over the surf and start racing each other along the waves. My dad and my uncles are the best body surfers on our beach. Even my grandfather Boppy is still good at it even though he is really old. The most most most fun thing to do in the ocean is climb on Dad’s back and hold onto his shoulders. We ride the waves in, like Dad is a giant boogie board. Dad stands and waits for the perfect wave. I cling to his back like a baby monkey.  The waves come in rows and they look huge to me. Dad waits and waits and waits until I am sure the wave will crash on our heads. He says, “Hold on tight.”

I take a huge breath. The wave picks us up and throws us forward, like a baseball shooting out of a pitching machine. My head sticks up out of the water and I laugh as we bounce along on top of the wave, all the way in to the shore. Dad finally lifts his face out of the water and I wonder how he can hold his breath that long. He says, “Whoo-whee!”

I give him the high-five. My dad is really cool sometimes.

We’ve been in the water so long that my teeth start to chatter and my fingers and toes are all pruny. Mom comes and stands at the shore and yells, “It’s almost lunchtime and you’re frozen. Dry off and have some lemonade.”

We sit wrapped in towels and drink lemonade while Mom walks up to the house to help Gammy with the sandwiches. Gammy and Boppy never come down to the beach until lunchtime, because Mom says they spend the whole morning putzing around the house. Gammy reads and plans dinner and Boppy fixes things and works in his garden. I think they need a break from all of us for a few hours.

Mom and Gammy drag the lunch cooler over the dune. Dad and Uncle Dave meet them and carry it the rest of the way. They set the cooler under the umbrella in the shade and wait for Gammy to open it. She passes out the sandwiches to us kids sitting on boogie boards. Most of my family eats toasted tomato sandwiches, which is toast with a piece of tomato and mayonnaise. I think toasted tomato is gross so I have peanut butter and jelly on Wonder Bread, which is cool because we always eat wheat bread at home. Even though I like smooth peanut butter I don’t mind when my sandwich is a little crunchy with sand. We also eat peaches from the produce stands and drink more lemonade. The grown-ups drink cans of beer, but they hide them in koozies because it’s against the rules to drink beer on the beach. Then Gammy pulls out our dessert: little Christmas cookies with red and green sugar all over them. She buys bags and bags of them on sale after Christmas. We sit on the beach all summer and munch little Santas and snowmen and trees and bells. We say “Ho, ho, ho,” and sing Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.

After lunch I’m tired. I like to sit on Mom’s lap while she talks to Gammy. They talk about books and the news and what the Pope said lately about this and that, but they also talk about whoever in the family is not down that weekend. I hear all kinds of interesting stuff. Just this summer Mom and Gammy were talking about my Uncle Kelly bringing his boyfriend to visit. It seemed weird to me that he would have a boyfriend since he is a boy himself, so I asked my cousin Leigh about it.

“He’s gay,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “What’s gay?”

She said, “It means he like to kiss other boys instead of girls.”

Leigh has learned a lot of stuff since she was ten like me.

Anyway, when I’m tired and I sit on Mom’s lap I wrap a towel all around my head so no one can see me. Sometimes I sleep for a while listening to the waves and the seagulls squawking, even though I am way too old to take a nap. With me sitting on Mom she finally gets hot enough to swim. I run and dive in to get the cold over fast, but Mom takes forever. Inch by inch. She complains about how this water is Fuh-reezing until we all gang up on her and splash her until she is soaked anyway. We swim for a while longer but I’m finally getting bored with swimming so I climb out and make a huge drip castle. Then I dig a wading pool for Brice and dig for sand crabs with Mary. I help Dad and my uncles build a wall and a moat in front of our umbrella to block the tide as it comes in. I play paddleball with Matt and Sam, and then we take turns burying each other in the sand. The sand is cool and heavy all over me but it starts to get itchy. I burst out and run to the ocean to rinse off.

By now I have enough sand in my bathing suit to fill a couple buckets. When I sit down I can feel it in the crotch liner of my suit like a little log. No matter how much I try I can’t rinse it out. I whine to mom that it’s bothering me and is it time to go back to the house yet? Mom tells me not for another hour. I’m cranky so I sit by myself. I write my name in the sand and make little tracks and tunnels for the toy cars. Somewhere there’s a dead horseshoe crab stinking everything up. I wish it would wash out to sea.

I hear the lifeguards blast their long whistle, and that means we can go back to the house. But now I don’t want to. They leave their lifeguard chair and all the kids run to climb all over it. We pile up sand underneath and jump off. I love to sit up there because you can see everything, and I think I’d like to be a lifeguard some day and whistle all day long at tourists who swim too close to the jetties.

Mom calls to us that its time to go home. Everyone grabs something and drags it back up over the dune to Boppy’s little beach shed with the spinning duck on top. We sit around outside waiting to shower. Its such a nice feeling to pull off my wet sandy bathing suit and wrap up in a fluffy towel that has been flapping in the sun on the outside line. I run up to the bunkroom and dress as fast as I can before my boy cousins come up there. I run a brush through my hair and by the time I get downstairs I just have time to play tag for a while before Boppy whistles us in for dinner.

Tonight we’re having barbequed chicken and corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes, my favorite summer dinner. Everyone sits at the same table. Not like at my other grandmother’s house where the kids and the grown-ups have their own tables. At Gammy’s we squeeze together, so you has to keep your elbows in and sit up straight so you don’t knock over the beer of the person sitting next to you. No one wants to sit beside my Uncle John, because he is left-handed and his jabbing elbows are famous in our family.

There’s lots of food and its really good so everyone eats and eats and does not say much for once. All us kids eat really fast because we’re ready to go into town. Every single night we walk up to town to get ice cream. Usually Dad and Uncle Dave and Uncle Ted take us. Mom stays home to help Gammy with the dishes. But tonight Gammy says to Mom, “Go ahead, I’ve got it.”

I’m double happy because my mom is coming, too. The kids shout and skip and race from one stop sign to the next. The parents walk behind us sipping beers in koozies and smoking cigarettes. It’s a long way up to town, like almost a mile. We walk along the road until we reach the boardwalk, where we run ahead until Mom calls, “Wait for us old folks!”

We stop and I run my hands along the railing. I’m careful because it looks smooth, but it can give you a splinter the size of a tree branch. When my parents catch up to us I skip some more. I lift my feet really high. Last summer a big storm knocked down the boardwalk. Since it was rebuilt nails stick up every few boards. They can trip a kid that is not watching where she is skipping. I have been walking this boardwalk my whole life. I know all its tricks.

We reach the end of the boardwalk and my cousin Leigh says to me, “Look, there’s Jason!”

I see my older cousin standing by the railing talking to some other teenagers, most of then girls. He flips his hair back and laughs and lights a cigarette, and I know he is trying to look cool. I don’t say hi because he would just pretend not too see us, because saying hi to your little cousins is not very cool, I guess. It’s too bad because he used to be fun.

We head toward the Bethany Beach Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Parlour.  The line is already out the door but it moves fast. Everyone always get the same thing. All the kids get rainbow ice cream on a cone. Mom gets a root beer float (yuck!) and Dad gets a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate. Both my uncles get butter pecan. We eat our ice cream at tables with high-backed fancy chairs and look at the old Coke ads on the wall with the big clunky cars and people wearing olden-days bathing suits. The girls in the posters have pink cheeks and tiny noses and I think my nose is already way bigger than that. I bet it will only get bigger. You’ll never see me and my nose in a Coke ad.

It’s dark by the time we start walking back and I’m so tired I can hardly move. Dad sticks me up on his shoulders, even thought I’m too big for that. I watch the end of his cigarette glow in the dark. Its looks like a Fourth of July sparkler flickering back and forth. I can’t stop staring at it, even if it smells awful. I don’t talk much. I just hold on and try not to get burned.

Suddenly we’re home. I drag my butt up the stairs and pull on my pajamas, and I don’t even care if my boy cousins are in the room. Leigh says, “Do you want to wait for Jason and Teddy?”

I say, “Sure.” I want to sound like I’m not tired but I know I’ll never make it. I go downstairs and kiss everyone goodnight. All the grown-ups are sitting on the porch. Dad has his guitar and Boppy has his little piano keyboard. My mom comes upstairs and tucks in all of us cousins. She kisses us all goodnight, which makes me proud because she is everyone’s favorite aunt. My cousins would rather have her that their own moms. We sleep with our heads towards the window to catch some of the breeze. Leigh is talking about something and I know I say, “Yeah,” but I’m not really hearing her. I’m listening to the sounds floating up from downstairs. Women’s laughter and men’s music. It’s been a long day.

 

Today I like: Moving back to Charleston!
Not so much: Packing for move to Charleston!

I’m doing something different today. In my pre-move purging I discovered a series of essays I wrote about six years ago. They all focus on my memories of summers at my Grandmother’s house in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Since I’m swamped with packing, and it is beach season, I thought I’d post them here.

From a writing standpoint, voice plays a big role in these essays. I remember really enjoying getting back into the voice of my childhood self in these little reminiscences. It’s fun (and a great exercise!) for a writer to explore difference ages in voice. Hopefully I caught some of age seven in this one. Enjoy!

The Drive

It’s too hot to move or bother each other or even talk so Mary and I just sit on the front steps and wait. I think about Dad’s new car. It’s light blue and about a hundred feet long. And it’s a diesel, whatever that means, but all I care about is the air-conditioning. Mom won’t run it in the house because it’s too expensive so we all just about boil in there. But on the drive to Gammy’s beach house we will blast the AC. Last summer, before Dad started working for Uncle Dave, we still had the old station wagon with no AC and we had to drive the whole way with the windows down. It was so loud I could not hear the radio or Mom and Dad talking about all the funny things my Dad and my uncles have been doing. I could not even hear myself when we all started singing like we usually do. All except Dad. He never sings with us even when Mom says, “Why won’t you sing? You are the singer in this family!”

Oh, thank goodness, here he is. My Dad gets out of the car and we jump down the steps to meet him. We forget it’s a hundred million degrees for a minute. He has a brown paper bag and Mary, who is only four, yells, “Daddy! Daddy, is there ice cream for us in there?” But I am seven and I know that its not ice cream, it never is. It’s always a six-pack of Coors Light. Dad brings one home every night. He stops at Louie Louie’s liquor store on the way home for smokes and beer. I used to look in there, too, but now I know better since I am seven.

Dad says, “Hey babies, are we ready to get on the road?”

“Almost!” I say, and we run upstairs to get our gray plastic suitcase with latches on the side. It’s old and crooked, so Mary stands on it to mash it closed while I flip the latches.

Then I drag it down the stairs and Mom says, “Leave it there, honey, your Dad will get it.” And I do because I know Dad likes to pack the trunk just so.

Dad yells, “Let’s haul ass! There will be a back-up at the bridge!”

Mom grabs my brother, little Brice, who is one, and her purse. Mary and I get to the car first. We push and shove over who gets to sit behind Mom. Dad is so tall your legs get squished the whole ride if you sit behind him, plus his cigarette smoke flies back in your face and makes you want to puke.

Mom says, “Steph gets to sit behind me. She’s taller.”

And Mary says, “She always gets to sit behind you. I want a turn!”

“When you are the tallest you can sit there,” says Mom.

I laugh and Mary says, “Hmmmph.” Because we both know she will never be the tallest.

I sink into the plush seats, and it’s like sitting on a giant powder blue marshmallow. Much better than the seats in the station wagon that were so hot you’d burn your butt and then sweat and stick to the seat. All of us Alexanders, just a bunch of flies on tape. This car even has a tape player. We’ve been listening to Michael Jackson all summer long and now I know all the words. I hope Mom and Dad will pop that in but they want to listen to Steve Winwood sing about a diver. When I ask what he is talking about Mom says, “This is grown up music, honey, you would not understand.”  I like Michael Jackson better because I understand all about Michael and his girlfriend running from the horrible dead people. I think about them a lot at night when I can’t sleep.

We pull out of our driveway and everything is great. Brice sits in his car seat between Mary and I. He eats cheerios and drools, which is what he is best at. We call him the Drool Bomb Baby because if you hold him up in the air and say “You’re so cute” or “Goo goo goo,” or one of those things people are always saying to babies, he will smile and drop a drool bomb right on your face. We think it’s funny but my great grandma Mimi thinks it’s gross. She says babies did not drool like that in her day and is there something wrong with him? She made my Mom so nervous that Mom asked Dr. Ortega about it. He told her it’s nothing, just his teeth coming in and babies have always drooled. So maybe Mimi is not so smart as she thinks, or maybe she is so old she can’t remember if her babies drooled.

Once we get on the highway I start thinking about what a long drive it is. It is almost three hours to Gammy’s house and that is one hundred and fifty miles. I know we just left but it already seems like a long time. So I ask my Dad, “How many more miles?” and he tells me about a hundred and forty. Ugh, that is forever. I hope we can stop at McDonald’s like we sometimes do but as we pass it Mom says, before I even ask, “Gammy is making spaghetti so we will eat when we get there.”

Oh well, if I can’t have McDonald’s spaghetti is pretty good too. After a long long time we finally get to the Bay Bridge. It’s huge and miles long and we love to look out the windows at all the tiny sailboats like ducks bobbing in the bay. Dad scares Mom because he spends the whole time looking out the window and pointing at boats and birds and whitecaps and not looking where he is going. Mom grabs the door handle and pushes her feet against the floor and says, “Good lord, Brice, watch the road.”

And Dad says, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been over this bridge fifty eleven times, right?”

We say “Yeah!” because Dad is thirty-two and he has been going to Bethany Beach since before he was born so that is a lot of trips over the Bay Bridge.

Once we are over the bridge I ask again, “How many more miles?” and Dad says about a hundred and ten and I sigh. But now the scenery is at least more interesting. The roads are small and there are lots of farms and towns with only one gas station. When we pass the cow farms Dad rolls down the window and sticks his head out and yells, “MOOOOOO!” and we all yell “MOOOOO!” too. Then we pass the chicken farms and they smell so bad we all hide our noses in our shirts. The chicken farms are the worst. Even worse that passing a skunk hit on the road. “Chickens linger,” says my Mom.

We also pass by abandoned houses which we call Monster Houses. When I was smaller I was scared of them. When Dad would say “There’s a Monster House!” I would hide my eyes. But now I like to look at the old houses. I wonder who used to live there and where they went and why they would just leave their house and all their things to be ruined. I tell Mary to look if there is an old bike or tire swing in front of the Monster Houses but she does not want to look. She is four and still scared. Brice is too little to care. He just waves his arms and drools.

Mary has to pee so we pull over next to a field of cows. Mom wants us all to go so we don’t have to stop again. I squat behind the car door so no one can see me. It’s hard to concentrate on not falling over in the grass or peeing on your underwear. Boys have it way easier. Dad just stands there and goes and says “MOOOOO!” to the cows that are watching us while they chew and chew and chew. I’m happy that I don’t pee on myself. I say a big “MOOOOO!” and climb in my seat. When we start moving again I say, “How many more miles?”

“I don’t know. About eighty. Don’t ask me again until we get to Coastal Highway.”

Now I ask Mom to sing something and she starts out:

Buffalo gals wont you come out tonight, come out tonight, come out tonight,

Buffalo gals wont you come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon,

 

And Mary and I join in

Dance with the dolly with the holes in her stocking and her knees kept a knocking

And her toes kept a rocking

Dance with the dolly with the holes in her stocking and she dance by the light of the moon

 

Mary and I just crack up because we think that song is a hoot. We sing it a bunch of times until Dad says, “Please. Please, something else.”

Mom says, “Why don’t you sing? You’re the singer in this family!”

Dad says, “I leave the singing to you and Mick Jagger.” We all know my Mom does not have a very good voice but she loves to sing so we all let her. We sing really loud so we drown her out a little.

We sing Sweet Baby James and lots of Beatles songs and that finally gets us to Coastal Highway. I ask Dad how many more miles. About thirty. We see all the familiar sights like the Sea-Esta Motel and old World War towers that sit on the dunes where the soldiers used to watch for submarines. Then there is the liquor store up on the right and I hold my breath. Maybe Dad won’t see it and we can just keep going. But he pulls over like usual. He has already drunk his six-pack so he needs more.  I say,  “Come on, Daddy, let’s go, we are almost there!” and Mom says, “There will be plenty of beer at the house.” But Dad always goes anyway and we all sit there about to jump out of our skins from sitting in the car for so long.

Finally he comes out and we’re on our way again. We leave the windows open but now I don’t mind. The air is has a fresh salty smell. It blows my hair back from my face as I stick my nose right out the window. We drive along the little string of land between the ocean and the bay. I feel very small stuck between all that water but also safe because we are heading to my Gammy’s house. It was one of the only ones that survived the big Northeaster about twenty years ago that knocked lots of houses in Bethany right off their stilts and into the ocean.

I ask “How many more miles?” even though I know we are almost there and Dad just ignores me because he knows I know. We pull over the Indian River Inlet bridge and Mary and I scream, “We’re here!”

Gammy’s house is the biggest on the street but it is tan like the sand and blends in so well with the dunes you might miss it if you didn’t know it was there. It’s not dark yet and I can see that my cousins are already here. Dad honk honk honks and squeezes his car in between Uncle Dave’s Cadillac and Uncle Ted’s big van, the one with the refrigerator in it.  Before the car is even stopped I open the door and scoot out. Mom says, “Good lord, don’t ding the car door!” but I am skinny so I can squeeze.

I don’t have shoes on so I have to walk carefully over the gravel driveway, and then up the wooden stairs where Gammy’s teacup roses peek through the slats with their sneaky thorns. I rip open the screen door. Boppy painted a big smiley face on it to keep my Aunt Jane from walking through it again. The carpet is soft on my feet, even softer than the diesel’s cushions. I run down the hallway. There is Gammy, standing at the kitchen counter stirring a huge pot of spaghetti. She is tan and her gray hair is twirled up in a fancy bun on her head, and she wears lots of gold bracelets that clink together with their own music. She slaps her hands on her apron, the one with the crabs wearing chef hats all over it. She leans down to meet me.

“There you are, darling. We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting. How was the drive?”

I hug her tight and say, “Fine Gammy, same as usual,” and then like my Mom always says,  “Traffic was not too bad.” I smell her smell, Lansinoh skin lotion and sand and coral-colored lipstick. “Where are Leigh and Matt?”

“Playing tag out on the beach with a bunch of kids. Why don’t you head out for a while? Boppy will whistle you all in at dinner.”

“Okay, Gams,” I say, and I walk towards the back door. I am excited to see my cousins so I don’t spend much time saying hello. But for some reason I look back and I see my grandmother standing there, where she usually is, and she sees me looking and smiles. She says, “Go on, darling.” And I know she will always be there, just like this house in the storm, waiting and waiting and waiting.