A beach trip is different from a city vacation. We don't have any exploring to do this week because we know Avalon, NJ inside and out. We won't really see anything new. We'll swim in the Atlantic Ocean and ride our bikes and eat at our usual restaurants. I'll read a lot.
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An hour and a half later and we're finally on the right side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Now we're really on vacation. Another hour or so and we’ll finally cross my favorite little bridge onto Seven Mile Island.
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| Stone Harbor beach at 81st Street, 6:30 AM, Sunday July 28 |
Sunday of beach week is like a holiday. Everyone is happy, except maybe a handful of island residents who are sick of tourists. Too bad for them. I'm smelling saltwater and Coppertone right now, and I'm brushing a fine coating of sand off my skin. It's blazing hot in the sun but it's cool and shady under the umbrella.
I was just in the middle of a conversation with my 18-year-old son, when he suddenly yelled "ice cream man!" and then took off running. We're close to the water and the tide might force us to shift the whole operation a few feet back.
And it did, very abruptly. We were all under our respective umbrellas, chatting with our assorted children, when a rush of saltwater soaked our towels and bags, with another wave hitting just as we pulled up stakes to move. We'll plan better tomorrow. For today, we cut the beach day short and split up, some of us to swim at the pool, some to ride bikes, and a few more who decided to take naps.
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So that’s a lot of people, you might be thinking, and you would not be wrong. When we take city vacations, it’s just my immediate family--husband and two sons, now teenagers. But beach week is come one, come all. Right now, in three separate locations within a five-block radius, we are on vacation with two sisters (one mine and one his), two brothers-in-law, three nephews, and one niece. My mother will arrive later today and will split up her time between my house and my sister’s.
It’s exhausting being the one person who has a connection with every single other person here. My phone, as they say on the Internet, blows up every morning and every evening as both sides of the family check to see what time we’re planning to make camp on the beach, and what time we’re going to have dinner and what that dinner will consist of. I’m popular.
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Avalon and Stone Harbor are two of the blondest and whitest places in the United States. There are maybe some sororities at universities in the southern states that contain more tan, beautiful blond girls than Avalon and Stone Harbor in July, but you would have a hard time finding any other place in the U.S. with a higher ratio of blond girls to members of every other demographic. And there are maybe some lacrosse teams or some country clubs where blond-haired, Sperry-wearing college-age boys represent a greater percentage of those present on any given day than 96th Street in Stone Harbor on a Saturday night in August, but if those country clubs and lacrosse teams are not in Connecticut or the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, then they’re in Stone Harbor or Avalon.
We were working class, so Avalon was not my beach town when I was growing up. We went to Wildwood. From 2009 to 2012, I worked for a small government contractor that eventually shut down (and that sentence sums up my entire working life from 2001 to 2015, by the way). One day in the lunchroom, I overheard a group of young interns discussing the then-new phenomenon that was MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” Shaking his head, one of the interns said “That show has to be scripted, because those people can’t possibly be real.” I laughed at his naivete. I knew that those people were real, and Wildwood, New Jersey is the reason why I knew that. So the contrast between my childhood beach experience of beaches crowded and noisy with competing transistor radios, and Greek luncheonettes and Italian-run pizzerias, and Morey’s Pier, and sleazy t-shirt and souvenir shops; and the preppy, moneyed gentility of Avalon and Stone Harbor is pretty stark.
Wealth and social status aside, though, it’s still New Jersey. People still listen to the radio on the beach; and just like in Philadelphia, if the radio isn’t tuned to a Phillies game, then it’s on a station that plays no music recorded after 1985 or so. There are at least 25 places where you can
get pizza that is actually worthy of the name. People who summer in $7 million beachfront estates in Avalon call soft ice cream “custard,” just like the people who save up all year to rent a third-floor apartment in Wildwood for a week. And there are t-shirt stores everywhere, even though they’re the kind of t-shirt stores that sell $95 hoodies and softly washed blue and gray t-shirts screen-printed with crossed paddles. The beach is the beach.
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Vacation privileges:
- Two showers a day. More if I feel like it.
- Never wiping down the shower walls.
- Doing only the minimum housework necessary to avoid squalor.
- Not keeping up with the news. Trump probably tweeted something today but if he did, I don't know about it.
- Answering all questions with the words "I don't know."
- Answering all followup questions, which are almost always slight paraphrases of the original question, with the words "I really don't know."
- Reading as much as I want to.
I just finished reading something that I liked so I have to find something new to read. It's only Tuesday and I would like to find a novel that with last through the rest of the week.
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| The view from our deck, where I wrote most of this. |
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It's Wednesday and I'm reading The End of the Affair. It's only my second Graham Greene, after Our Man in Havana, which I loved. I'm not sure why I didn't start reading him a long time ago but I will make up for lost time now. This book won't last me through the rest of the week. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.
I always get tired midway through our beach vacation. I love the beach, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of carrying back and forth. A lot of schlepping, because that’s a good onomatopoeic word. After a day on the beach and a sweaty trek home under the merciless sun, burdened by bags and towels and chairs and umbrellas, I’m as tired as a coal miner. By Wednesday, I feel like a camel, midway through a long and thirsty journey across a burning desert.
Then Thursday comes, and I realize that I’ll only wake up to the sound of seagulls three more times this year. Only two more full days at the beach; only two more days of bicycle runs to the corner grocery store to buy Jersey peaches and Jersey tomatoes and wine and ice cream and nothing else. Maybe a bagel.
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We spent today with friends from home who are staying in Wildwood, a few miles and a world away from Avalon. My friend told me that she feels conspicuous for her lack of tattoos and body piercings. They are new to the Jersey shore and chose Wildwood because of its proximity to Cape May. They’re having a good time, though, with three children who love the wide beach and the crazy colorful noisy boardwalk that smells like french fries and pizza and funnel cake.
Our friends arrived on our doorstep at 7:30 this morning. The male 60 percent of the family joined my brother-in-law’s annual crabbing trip, while the ladies stayed behind with me. We walked to the shops in Stone Harbor and had a smoothie and shopped at Hoy’s, and then we packed a picnic and headed to the beach. Despite cold water, we all enjoyed a swim, and then my friend’s delightful 10-year-old daughter entertained my six-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece, while their mother read her book, amazed at the normally shy three-year-old’s willingness to make a new friend. After an afternoon on the beach, the men rejoined us for a quick swim in the pool, and then we took turns taking five-minute showers before walking to my sister’s house (carrying the aforementioned wine and ice cream) for the annual crab feast that follows the annual crabbing trip. My friends returned to Wildwood at 9 PM or so, as the week’s first thunder began to rumble. It was a perfect day.
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It's Thursday now, and I woke this morning to cloudy gray skies. It wasn’t gloomy; it was actually rather nice. The ocean and the bay and the sky were all the same pearly color; perfect for seagull camouflage. Everything was quiet. A handful of other people were out on their bikes. We nodded to one another as we passed.
It’s a little past 10 now and the sun is out, so we’ll head to the beach soon. We’re hoping for warmer water. The water has gotten a little colder each day this week. Apparently, a rip current is to blame. That’s what the surfers say, anyway, and who am I to argue with them?
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And now it's Friday. This morning dawned just like yesterday, with pearl gray skies and slightly lighter pearl gray clouds and a pale yellow sun trying to break through but not quite succeeding.
I hadn't been shopping this week so my son and I rode our bikes to the shops. He and I have a long tradition of early morning excursions during vacation, while the rest of the family sleeps in. We didn't do this every day that time. He's almost 15 now and he likes to sleep. It was nice to have him back again. We found a little used book and print store where we bought a framed vintage postcard and beach tag. It sounds silly but it spoke to us. Then I bought a sweatshirt blanket and St. Christopher medals, and a fancy donut for my son.
As we browsed at Hoy's, my son's favorite childhood shopping destination, I noticed a lady in her 70s carrying a basket of toys and gifts. She perused a rack of beaded bracelets, pursing her lips and tilting her head to the side, trying to choose the best bracelets for her granddaughters or nieces. She finally made her selections and headed to the register to pay. I guessed that it was her last day, too.
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Saturday again, and we're on Route 47 North along with all of the other slightly sad people who are returning home from the shore.
I woke up early this morning, as I always do. After one last bike ride and one last walk on the beach, I came back to wake up the rest of the family to pack up our house. And now here we are, winding our way through the Pine Barrens to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
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| It was a good shell-collecting week. This was the very last one. It had to end sometime. |
The End of the Affair actually did hold out until Friday. It's even better than Our Man in Havana. I'll write about it later. I just started the next book in my queue, a history of postwar Europe that will probably take weeks to read. No more novels for now.
I almost wish that I hadn't put my feet in the water this morning. But I can still go swimming later today. Beach week is over but summer is not.
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