Back from the Beach

I am grateful as all get-out to be able to say that I've just returned from an impromptu trip to the beach.  I planned a short getaway to Ocean City, Maryland--my family's annual summer vacation spot when I was a kid--the week before leaving, which is to say I ended up making the trip with very little money and just a shoulder-bag of a few belongings, and it was perfect and just what I needed.  ♥

No matter how much I travel, I can't imagine loving any place more than I love Ocean City, since the nostalgia of it is so dear to me.  My older brother and I were still the only kids in the family the first time we ever went.  My younger brother was barely ten the last time we were all there together.  My parents were still both healthy enough back then to run on the boardwalk every morning.  I brought my Cabbage Patch Kid in her pink bikini-outfit one summer and spent another summer imagining I was wowing everyone walking along the boardwalk as I did gymnastics on the front lawn outside our motel, doing one-handed cartwheels so I could hold my t-shirt down while I flipped.  Ocean City is Dad in his thirties and forties.  Ocean City is Mom in a bikini.  Ocean City is my Older Brother's arrival at the beach wearing striped tube socks almost up to his knees.  Ocean City is Younger Brother's rubbing sand into his eyes the first time my mom ever set him down in it, forcing us to forgo the beach awhile longer to find the nearest drugstore for eye-drops.   Ocean City is Dad's exasperatedly forcing me, year after year, to try the various types of seafood that everyone else would devour--"You might like it this year!  You don't know!"  (I did know.  Phillips Crab House on Atlantic makes incredible potato salad that a girl can fill up on, I can report; A bucket of Thrasher's French Fries is also a meal unto itself, and the Paul Revere Smorgasbord offers fixings for a turkey dinner.)  Ocean City is a boy staring at me in my bathing suit for the first time.  Ocean City is my helping Mom choose the perfect postcard for Papa and Grandma back home in Pennsylvania.  Ocean City is my wondering if anyone will ever feel about me the way Peter Cetera is singing about in "Glory of Love" on the radio while our car is crossing the seemingly-never-ending Chesapeake Bay Bridge.  Ocean City is my collecting a gallon-jug of soft beach-sand for my friend Sommer since she's asked me to bring some home for her to use with craft projects.  I can laugh and choke up at an almost infinite number of Ocean City memories.  And everyone but me had made it back to the beach in the many years since we all last went together as a family, for their vacations and anniversaries, and I have ached for it and missed it like it was a person.  Last week, I'd waited long enough and decided to throw some money at the problem, as they say, and I planned a getaway. 

By Tuesday evening, then, I was finally--FINALLY!--there again.  ♥  I felt weepy the first moment I smelled the salt water, I cried as I stepped back onto the boardwalk, I choked up when I caught my first glimpse of the ocean from the boardwalk, I cried off and on as I walked along it to get to my motel--one of the ones we would stay at when I was a kid, of course--I cried while sliding open my room's balcony door to listen to the surf.  The woods in the fall and Ocean City at any time are Heaven on Earth to me.  I didn't take a minute of my time at the beach this week for granted. 

I spent my twenties struggling through years of college and grad school, much-hated jobs and hard times without jobs, bouts of depression, a lack of bravery that repeatedly hurt me more than playing things safe ever helped me,  deaths and other losses, so many things that didn't work out in just about every aspect of my life, a breakup that I let keep me worked-over years longer than I should have, weight gain, giving up my apartment to move back in with my parents, and ohhhhhhhhh!  just feeling so lost and screwed-up in so many ways.  Jauntily heading off to Ocean City, or much of anywhere else, was just not in the cards for me for so long.  And then I spent my thirties catching up in all kinds of ways.  As I've told my mom, everything that made life hard for me for so long is exactly what makes all The Good and The Sweet and The Beautiful so precious to me now.  This was my first trip to "my" beach in twenty-three years.  The picture below is the first I took of myself my first morning there this week, and my gratitude in it is palpable.  Ocean City!  My heart!  ♥

As I mentioned when I turned forty in May, I am getting better about making self-care a real priority, and remembering to do so remains one of my goals for the year(s) ahead.  I spent Wednesday evening drinking glass after glass of iced tea on my balcony while watching the seagulls and the tide, and that time was a balm for the soul.  There was an ice cream cone and some pizza this week too, but also a good afternoon nap with the balcony door open, long walks up and down the boardwalk and along the shore, a gorgeous fruit salad for lunch and another salad for supper, so many cups of water, and all my usual vitamins and sunscreen-slatherings and prayers.  May my forties be a colossal "Thank You" and "I Get It" after all the Mister-Toad's-Wild-Ride Years.  And may they find me--please--iced tea in-hand at the beach many, many more times.  This is good for me, and it's not a waste of money, and I deserve it as much as anyone else.  (Repeat as needed.)  I finally understand this now, and I don't want to forget again.    I have always been too hard on myself, but I am slowly changing for the better.  Live and learn.  And book a room with a balcony.  :) 

This is forty.  :)  ♥

Save my spot, Ocean City.  I am already planning and saving to get back to you again next year.  

♥

The Neighbor's Garden

O' to have even this much space for a garden!  I will try to feel more appreciation than envy.  The neighbor has brightened the fire escape next door, for sure. Beautiful.  ♥

Friday

Cuddles with the floofy kit-kat.  Tomato-and-mayonnaise-on-white-bread for breakfast.  Soft flour tortillas stuffed with sauteed mushrooms and melted cheddar for lunch.  Homemade dark chocolate and almond brownies. Sun tea with lemon.  A bubble bath.  A little more sleep.  A hard rain this morning and a gorgeously cloud-dotted blue sky this afternoon.  Extra time to write.  "Night Court" reruns.  (Harry Anderson is one of my many crushes.)  A night off tonight, so more time to read.  Real mail.  Home.  ♥

~ I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. ~ Anne Frank

on the bathroom windowsill today ♥

August Sunshine

One of this past week's projects has been painting the little window-wall in the main room. According to the paint chip, this color is "Saffron Thread," but let's be honest and call it "Egg Yolk" instead.    

It changes in the light but is more orange than yellow, exactly as I'd hoped. When the walls were still bare post-painting, I wasn't so sure about it, but now as I rehang each of the pots, pans, and needlepoints,  the color seems the shade I was going for, after all.  'One more coat for the pots and pans wall, a tumble in the wash for the curtains, and a rehanging of the string lights, and this project will be done, in time to brighten not-far-off fall days. 

♥

Be Funny, It's Your Money

This was, according to my aunt Heidi, how my grandfather used to answer the phone.  :)  Today it has been two weeks since his funeral, and anecdotes like that one are now able to make me laugh without then crying too.  Progress!  It's been a rough month.  I still haven't completely unpacked the luggage I'd taken home for the services.  I still haven't tackled the mountain of laundry in the bedroom either.  I have gotten real mail out to family, though, and emails and texts, as well, and even found my somehow-now-thirteen-year-old nephew Dylan a birthday card with a drawing of a pickle on the front and a message inside of, "You're a big Dill!"  ♥  (Remember his first day of kindergarten!?  Sweet Baby Dyl!)  Life, then, goes on, and so do I, finding love and smiles--even in my salads--as always.  And my grandfather would approve--all the better. 

Gone from My Sight

My maternal grandfather died this weekend, and the fourth of July holiday-weekend is an appropriate send-off for this Navy veteran, I find myself thinking.  When I once described her dad as "a character," my mom agreed and noted, "Both your grandfathers are characters."  And now both are gone, and I can't come up with the words quite yet to express how jarring that feels.  . . My time as someone's grandkid also passing away.  My grandfather would have turned ninety next month.  This is my ever-present-Yankees-cap grandfather.  The grandfather with the most beautiful, looped, delicate script-handwriting.  The grandfather who's always somehow reminded me of Elton John.  :)  The grandfather who would embarrass my grandmother by loudly and realistically neighing like a horse in the middle of Target to get her attention while she shopped.  :)  The grandfather who would add big-nosed "Kilroy was here"-style drawings to the backs of his letters' envelopes for me.  ♥  

A strict Baptist who had been raised on a large dairy farm, he never cursed; A man he encountered at work one day so angered him, he felt enraged enough to let some baaaaad words fly finally, the story goes, but all my grandfather managed to spit out was, "You--you--you applehead!"   He was always the first to laugh at himself, and no one has ever described him without using some variant of silly, goofball, or ham to do so.  During an Easter 2001 visit, he stood at my mom's side at the kitchen table late at night as she blearily tried to think of a final few rhyming clues for the next morning's egg-hunt before going to bed, and we were soon dissolving in giggles as his suggestions got sillier and sillier.  "How 'bout this, Chris?" he would begin--and she would cry out, "Stop!" and be laughing already before he even continued--"Your next prize might be under the tree.  If it is chocolate, leave it there for me!"  And as we all grew more tired and punchy, his helpful rhymes included gems along the lines of, "You think there's treasure in this yard?  Well, there's not, Kid.  Life is HARD!"  :) 

He served eight years in the Navy and was one of the helmsmen of the USS Wasp.  I'm hoping one of my aunts or uncles remembers to bring his official Navy portrait to the services this week so I can finally see it and take a picture of it.  He looks "just gorgeous" in it, in Aunt Laurie's words, so young and blue-eyed.  (Update:  They remembered.  ↓  ♥)

My grandmother remains, after having had him in her life more than sixty years.  She herself turned ninety this year.  The week ahead for all of us--Mom and Aunt Laurie have three brothers and two other sisters, there are more than twenty grandchildren, and now so many great-grandchildren too--will be heartbreaking.  Aunt Laurie, Mom, and I fondly remember Grammy's shock when my no-dancing-permitted grandfather led her out onto the dance floor at my older brother's wedding.  Life has its sweet surprises too, after all. 

Everyone's stories of  my grandfather are funny and endearing ones, told and retold.  One of Mom's favorites is of how during a family camping trip as a kid, she woke in the middle of the night to the whoops and hollers of my grandfather running around outside the tent chasing raccoons away from the family's food-stash in his underwear.  :) 

Decades later, upon first meeting my dad's Italian-born grandmother, who lived next door to us when I was little, he kindly accepted the glass of homemade wine she offered him since he did not know how to refuse her politely, especially since Great-Grandma spoke no English.  With the intention of getting it over with quickly, he downed the glass and smiled his "thanks" at Great-Grandma, but she misinterpreted his quick drinking and pleasant smile as a sign that he was a big drinker and would like more, so she refilled his glass--and refilled it--and refilled it yet again--and my sweet grandfather ended up near-drunk for the first time in his life (and smiling all the more the longer this went on, of course) before she finally understood that he really had had enough.  :)  That story is still my favorite.  Mom always loved to tease him about it, and he would laugh harder than anybody when she did.  ♥

He loved children and could always be found at reunions and get-togethers wherever they were gathered, much preferring playing like a kid to visiting over coffee with the rest of the adults. "Well, he IS just a big kid," one of my aunts has always added whenever this has been brought up. 

Last year, my uncle Dan arranged for my grandfather to be gifted with an honor flight--Bless!--and accompanied him to Washington, D.C. where he was recognized for his military service.

It is one photo from that trip that keeps making me cry this weekend--one of my always-sweet but almost-always-smiling grandfather standing tall to offer a crisp and quite solemn salute.  

For whatever reason, the salute--just like the homemade pies after my other grandfather died--is what keeps breaking me this weekend.  It comes to mind and I dissolve again.  We're talking about my grandfather, though--he of the applehead-curse and Kilroy drawings--so not to worry:  There is always a reason to smile again soon enough.

♥