Ten hours ago, I stood regarding the whitecaps on the Atlantic Ocean and feeling the sweat build on my skin from the warm, humid New Jersey air. I mention this because it’s about 55 degrees here in Boston now, and I’m wrapped up in the green afghan Miss OT crocheted for me back in ’96. (It never fails to amaze people that Miss OT crochets. It’s like when Rosie Grier came out of the knitting closet.) I can’t believe I was really there, but I have a sunburn and there’s a pile of beach towels on my kitchen floor, so it’s likely.

As beach weeks go, it was a pretty good one. We only had one rainy day, and even then we trekked down to the beach and convinced ourselves it would let up soon. My friend Ann, who is currently between jobs and therefore could have come any day she chose, selected this day to join us. We sat huddled in beach chairs under the umbrellas, trying to position ourselves to avoid the big drips rolling off the spokes, until finally one of us timidly asked my mother if we could leave now. Though she gave us permission, she herself remained, hidden underneath an umbrella pulled to within a few inches of her head as she finished her crossword. Ah, dedication.

Ann opted to stay for another day, and so it was that she also participated in our second beach problem – a reliving of the Amityville Horror scene where the priest goes into the house and suddenly there are all these flies all over the window, and he is just like, “where the HELL are these SON OF A BITCHING FLIES coming from??” and it was just like that, only on a beach and with flies that BITE (in the literal sense). (As a side note, the house used in that particular Amityville Horror scene is located in Toms River, NJ, not too far from where we were.) This phenomenon happens when the wind comes off the land instead of the ocean – it blows the flies onto the beach, and they have nowhere to hang out except on us. (This was explained to me by Tan Man, who spent the week alone on a chair/blanket/fishing rod combo he inexplicably set up within 10 feet of us each day, despite the otherwise deserted beach. Tan Man looked to be in his mid-forties and had an interesting accent, though his excessive sun worship made race and nationality difficult to guess.) As soon as the flies began to mass on the umbrella poles, Ann announced “I’m out” and marched back up to the house. My sister and I attempted to fool the flies into thinking we were leaving by taking a dip in the ocean, but later gave up and followed Ann up to the house.

The Day of the Flies was salvaged during cocktail hour on the roof deck, when margherita and pina colada recipes were perfected to the point where Nature Boy felt the need to climb up onto the actual roof for a better view of the ocean. (Nature Boy has been given to activities like this all his life, and as a group we have often marvelled at his undeserved longevity.)

Cocktail hour was otherwise held on the beach, around 5 pm, when my father would magically appear with a full blender and a handful of glasses. On Friday, cocktail hour began at 3:30, and included several plates of snacks and a reappearance of the large plastic canister of carbohydrate shapes that we had been munching on all week.  The canister had been emptied and refilled several times throughout the week, and was favored due to its seagull resistant properties. This was important, as the New Jersey seagull has become as friendly as the Boston Common squirrel, which is to say obnoxious. Over the course of the week, I saw several instances of seagulls walking onto our towels to stick their beaks into open bags, looking for edibles, before I chased them away. (Last year, a seagull marched up the Ewe’s towel, took a full bag of pretzels out of her beach tote, hauled it about ten feet away, opened it, and consumed the contents in a disgusting but impressive display of gluttony.) Twice, seagulls approached the Canister of Crap and pecked in vain at its sturdy plastic construction. The people who put together those ads about how wonderful plastic is, how it’s used in artificial heart valves to save lives and in electric sockets to prevent toddler electrocution, should really consider adding something about seagulls to their commercials.

Evening entertainment was light and included traditional games and one memorable game of hearts, in which the Ewe shot the moon several times, and each time professed not to have intended to do so. We were not fooled.

Though we all like the beach, no one enjoys the shore vacation like my mother. She even found enjoyment in the seagulls, and decided that one pair frequenting our area was a mother/child combo. She could tell because the smaller, brown bird continually followed the larger, white bird across the sand, squeaking and pecking at the larger bird’s beak until the larger bird just got completely exasperated and gave it something to eat. It seemed, though, that the baby bird was far too large to still be dependent on its mother for food, and that observation coupled with the way it walked (head tucked down for that neck-free, linebacker look, feathers streamlined so it resembled an oversized lawn dart) led my brother to conclude it was somehow retarded or, as the Ewe corrected him, “differently abled.” (My siblings are kind, sensitive people.) Mom’s maternal instincts cross species lines, and several times I saw her sneak some of the carbohydrate shapes to the mother bird when Dad wasn’t looking.

This morning rolled around far sooner than any of us expected. By six a.m., Dad was up, dressed, and ready to load the car. Around that time, I was crawling into bed with Mom and asking her why he was up, a question I often ask and for which she rarely has an answer. (We are the only family I know that has pictures of Main Street in Disney World with no other people in them. This was no miracle – this was Dad getting us up at dawn in Orlando to ensure we were the first people in line that day. He was not permitted to repeat that particular stunt.) Eventually, the rest of us gave in, got dressed, and loaded our respective bags into our respective cars. The wind picked up as we drove off the island, and Ivan escorted me all the way back to Boston, where I now sit reflecting on a souvenir sunburn, a damp, gritty, pile of laundry, and a largely crossed-off reading list – in short, a week well spent.

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