Here now and gone so fast
Is it possible that summer is almost gone? I think back on June and July and try to remember my promise to sit back and enjoy the splendor of the no school year routine, but all the day trips and activities are making me tired and in need of a long nap. With the older boys away at summer camp we were able to take our days off and spend some lovely quality time on The Cape with my parents.
Our beach house is old Cape Cod with rooms packed to the rafter with memories, flea market and tag sale finds and childhood treasures dragged up from the beach and enshrined in the front yard garden. It is not one of the Bostonian rebuilt Mcmansions complete with landscaped yards and watering systems, but rather the small quaint, sandy, musty cottage of years gone by with beds tucked in rooms and under stairs so the whole family can come for the weekend and everyone has a couch a bed or an old camping cot to sleep on.
The best part of going to the beach for me is waking up to morning coffee on the front deck and watching the tide go all the way out and come all the way back in. The peace and serenity is a complete turn around from my real world life. I get strength and creative energy from the simple wash of the waves on the shore and the sound of kids playing wafting up over the bluff. The light on Cape Cod is positively pure and sparkles like polished glass on every surface. When the sun sets the whole street stops and drinks in the glorious colorful display of day turning into night. No charge for this light show, just the cost of one more summer day slipping past.
The middle of the day is filled up with a sail when the wind wants to cooperate. We were fortunate enough to be gifted a Sunfish sailboat from 1963. A fellow Caper had it in storage for decades and wanted to see life back in the sails and we were happy to oblige. As kids we sailed the waters of Cape Cod bay for endless hours. Our sail was blue and we took it out with the tide and back in over the sand bars. We had more fun flipping the boat and turning the turtled craft right side up so many times tourists on the beach would come out and try to rescue us. We snickered and sneered at them the way only teenagers can and kept right on causing Rescue 911 meets Baywatch. Believe it or not we used to take a fishing pole with us and occasionally hit on a school of feeding bluefish. That was some advanced sailing to keep on the wind and drag in a fighting blue. This summer we had no wind, too much wind and no fish.
Clearly a different day 
finding exactly the right spot for the perfect clams. Cooking at the summer house is not a chore. You have all day to plan dinner and everyone makes a dish a course or a dessert and it all comes together whenever.
For the fourth of July we had heirloom tomato salad with balsamic glaze, brown sugar bbq ribs, sweet local corn (" How many ears are you going to eat?") and chocolate decadence cakes with black raspberry ice cream. That menu salutes America with all my favorites and might possibly be a runner up for my death row meal. Just make sure you spread my ashes across the sparkling bay.
September has come and we send them all back to school. I may be crazy not wanting the boys to go back to school, but the laid back lazy days of summer are precious and life just moves too quickly these days. We go back to school and back to alarm clocks, packing lunches, making the bus in time, homework and all the scheduled nonsense of the academic year, and yet I realize that most of my best life lessons were learned on family vacation time. Still to this day the beach house brings me clarity and puts my hectic world in perspective. While we race toward next summer with our harried school year life, that tide is still coming in and going out and I cannot stop thinking about the beautiful reflection of that perfect orange light slipping into her ocean bed.
Happy back to school
Bee El
Goodnight Sun
Who is that kid?
