Summers growing up on Fairfield Beach were long and lazy. It is still that way if you let it be so! Although childhood was a bit more carefree, without worries of what to grill tonight, going home to water those tomatoes, and throw a job in there for a few hours, I truly love my time in the family cottage. Starting off the week we witnessed a "shelf cloud" (thanks Judy for that knowledge!) and a dazzling display of lightning on the horizon.
Storms over the water are so much more dramatic!
Walking the beach every morning you see the child that you once were. A future architect or designer in the making left their handywork for my enjoyment. A home floor plan laid out with such care and diligence. I remember the castles I built and flags made of sticks and seaweed. This is exactly what I mean when I say summers were carefree and a time for creativity to unleash itself. No rules, no clocks to watch. Just use your imagination for fun instead of television or computers!
Sights and sounds are still the same as when I was a child. Passing oyster boats, seats to sit awhile (with just a little sway that was remedied) and of course the ebb & flow of tides, sunrises and sunsets.
The quintessential planted cinder block overflowing with marigolds and portulaca greets you at the back door. Wait, we are all in agreement that the back door is the one on the road side and the FRONT door overlooks the beach, correct! That is the only way to have it at the beach!
A collection is started, an idea is developing. Some forage in the woods, I gather on the beach. Nature in its most basic form takes on a different meaning when pulled from the natural habitat. The shape, the texture and the beauty of seaweed is made more apparent when spread out to dry.
As it dried it lost its color the shape was awesome....so the collection continued all week with pieces pressed and saved for a special project coming soon! Losing the boundaries, letting the beach enter in and relax you with not a care as to what others think of your new found passion....ahhhh, this is what a beach week means to me.
And then a birthday to celebrate family & life! What would it be without sparklers instead of candles! The traditions continue, the beach way of life is absorbed unconsciously by the next generation.
Morning has broken, like the first morning...what else can you think when you wake up to such unscathed beauty?
Solitude, serenity and a bit of feng shui?
Feng means
wind and
shui means
water. In Chinese culture wind and water are associated with good health, thus good feng shui came to mean good fortune....hopefully Pappa D was on the right path by creating his own zen garden below in the sand!
And then there are always surprises left with each passing tide.
Leftovers from from a true clam bake the night before? I am jealous....wishing we could still dig cherrystones and quahogs from the sand bars and whip up some Rhode Island chowda, stuffed clams or clams casino from our harvest!
But the prize I found at the end of my beach week ...
...was truly inspiring. An almost perfect miniature horseshoe crab about 2 inches wide was washed ashore and lay on a tangled mess of seaweed, flotsam and jetsam. So fragile and brittle, I scooped it up and felt like a child again, practically running back to the cottage so that I could show off my last (at least for now) gift from the sea!
Enjoy the rest of the summer everyone!
