It’s 5:30 a.m. and my internal alarm clock goes off in anticipation of Sir William the Loud’s awakening in the room next door. Sir William is the offspring of my friends Jen and Kelley, and has graced us with the power of his lungs for 19 months now. In fifteen minutes, he will announce his waking with one of the four words he knows – MaMa, DaDa, More, or Dirty – probably one of the first two, since it’s their attention he wants. One parent will rise, package Will and his accoutrement into a manageable bundle, and head for the minivan. Each morning is a tour of a different piece of the Cape, and each tour includes a stop at Dunkin’ Donuts, without which no New Englander’s morning is complete. I am along for the ride each day.

The Cape vacation has no routine other than this. Eleven adults, two small children, and two large Labradors share the house all week, and a few guests come and go throughout. There is one shower. There is no television. There are three main pieces of furniture, one of which lost the right to call itself a sofa years ago, so seating is at a premium and residents frequently call out “my seat is saved” upon rising to ensure their spots will be available upon their return. (Visitors should note that honoured absences are limited to five minutes. Visitors should further note the importance of ensuring that a third party hears them state “my seat is saved” in order to verify their claims, as competition to locate or upgrade seating is ruthless.)

At least once during the week, Uncle Kenny makes breakfast. Uncle Kenny makes enough bacon so that each person gets two pieces, and bacon consumption is monitored vocally. Uncle Kenny also makes scrambled eggs with peppers, onions, and cheese that surpass all eggs made elsewhere. (Kelley claims to have been taught Uncle Kenny’s technique, but as I have reminded him, it’s all talk until he actually produces the eggs. So far, no luck with that, so I only get breakfast made to this standard during the official Cape vacation.) Uncle Kenny is an unlikely cook, a man who pretends to personify “gruff,” but like an egg his hardness is easily cracked.

Most other meals are eaten a la carte at the house, or at Cooke’s, the local fried-seafood takeout place. Groceries for the house are obtained via the group compilation of a master list, which is Job One upon our arrival on Saturday. With an ease achieved from nineteen or twenty years (no one is sure) of practice, Tom takes pen to paper and records the list of items shouted from family members who surround him in a circle. At times, the process takes on the tone of free association, as items called out by one person spark ideas from others. Miraculously, Tom hears and records it all, and actually reminds the group when categories appear to have been missed. (“What about lunch meat?” and “Do we want breakfast cereal?” Even so, condiments are rarely included and we eat many dry sandwiches during the week.) Tom will then travel, solo, to the grocery store. The receipt from this expedition will be added to receipts from others who will venture out during the week, and sometime around Thursday Tom will perform detailed calculations to determine how much each of us owes the others. Amounts are presented net, and balances due are sometimes nonsensical. Most recently, no one owed Kenny any money except for Colleen, who owed him forty cents. She provided two quarters and received a dime back. 

Dinner out is not something we take lightly. The best part, as Colleen has noted, is watching the expression on the face of the hostess when we tell her we have eleven adults and two children, and we want to sit together. This can take up to an hour and a half, and Cape vacation veterans know to bring a book. Once seated, however, we invariably agree that the wait was not bad and that sitting together was worth it.

Each year seems to take on a theme, and this year’s theme was, unfortunately, poop. It began Saturday evening, when Lucy (who is four) became very distressed upon discovering that the upstairs toilet was clogged. Her concern rapidly spread to the rest of the group as we contemplated a week with only one shower AND only one toilet. Tom summoned the landlord, Dick, who arrived with a piece of equipment that looked suitable for oil exploration. Tom and Dick disappeared upstairs for several hours, and as the rest of us sat downstairs reading, their conversation carried down to us despite our best efforts not to hear it. At one point, Tom came downstairs and reported that they were pulling up some sort of creamy white stuff. Jen pulled her head down into her sweatshirt and swallowed hard. After a while, Dick gave up and came downstairs, telling us he would be back the next day to “pull the toilet” and “clear the clog from there.” (These were not phrases that Jen enjoyed, and I must say they didn’t present a pretty picture to me, either.)  Dick did return on Sunday, and he and Tom spent another hour working on the clog until Tom came triumphantly down the stairs bearing a white Kleenex with a lump of something heavy in the middle. “Here’s what was clogging the toilet!” he announced, and I swear Jen turned green before ducking out of his path. Those of us bold enough to look into the Kleenex saw a squishy white blob – someone, presumably the previous tenant, had flushed a bar of soap down the toilet.

On Monday, Lucy again provided unwelcome intelligence. This time, she reported that there was poop on the roof. Cousin Joanna at first attempted to talk her out of this conclusion, but upon closer examination, agreed with Lucy. The group questioned Joanna closely regarding size and hypothetical origin of the poop, and from her answers we concluded that the poop had been left by either a human or a large dog. (Jen did not participate in these discussions. I am really beginning to worry about Jen.) We only wished we could have gotten to know the previous tenants better, as they really seemed like the kind of people we would want to spend time with.

On Wednesday, Raven (the black Labrador) found several lobster shells in the trash and consumed them. Jen reached this conclusion after finding several unattached lobster legs on the kitchen floor and positing from this that shells had at one time been attached, and further noting Raven crunching something off in the corner. We were at first concerned for Raven’s health, but decided that an animal capable of consuming bones could probably handle the lobster shells. Raven’s owners spent the remainder of the week closely monitoring Raven’s excrement for evidence that the shells had passed through her system. Once this occurred, we debated whether to leave the droppings in place so as to frighten the incoming tenants, but the golden rule won out and we chose to eliminate the waste from the yard, so to speak.

Friday, as always, crept up too quickly and arrived unexpectedly. This year, Friday was our only rainy day, and though it cleared by evening, the humidity topped ninety percent. Those of us not reared in the Amazon were uncomfortable and ready to move on, and worked up a sweat packing our cars. We said our good-byes to the Connecticut and New Jersey contingents, and turned on our walkie-talkies in order to maintain radio contact during our trip back to Boston. About halfway between Orleans and the Sagamore Bridge, we received a transmission indicating that our lead car, the minivan, was pulling over – Lucy had announced the need to visit the restroom. It seemed, somehow, an appropriate ending.

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