A Rocky Good-bye to the Beach House

I mean, what do you expect? We spend two whole weeks in a house with a lovely big open room one block from the ocean (and are able to piggyback on someone’s internet server so Charlie is able to discover the pleasures and perils of YouTube) and (after a very anxious start) fall into a fine routine of late morning and late afternoon ocean swims, punctuated by plenty of beach food (i.e., seafood and fries, though Charlie was not too interested in the latter—a first—but wanted sushi again and again; good thing it’s become a fixture at the Jersey shore along with the crabcakes). We overpacked, meaning that all that I should have packed was three shirts, one pair of shorts, and three swimsuits for Charlie (because he rotated wearing those few items).

A few years ago, Charlie spent the last three days of vacation shouting “No Gong Gong no PoPo” over and over and over. Gong Gong and PoPo are Cantonese for “maternal grandfather” and “maternal grandmother” and are what Charlie calls my parents; he’s extremely fond of them, but had equated their arrival with leaving the beach house, and so shouted himself hoarse. Another year he hid his favorite toys, a stuffed Barney and a toy computer, Alphabert, in a closet and told us “no Barney, no Alphabert” when we asked Charlie where these were. Jim thought to look in a closet and found both toys and we realized the Charlie was hoping that if his favorite toys could not be found, we’d never have to leave.

This year, we made sure that Charlie knew that Saturday would be the last day by talking about it and showing Charlie a calendar on his computer. But the reality of the last day only hit Charlie when he came down the stairs Saturday moring and saw the bags and laundry hampers packed. He insisted on leaving a red boogie board (which was scraped and banged up) at the beachhouse.

Jim and I have a hard time leaving ourselves and, rather than sit on the Garden State Parkway in bumper to bumper traffic with everyone else trying to get home on Saturday afternoon, we’ve often gotten in one last afternoon at the beach with a long walk out on a rock jetty. Charlie took the lead on the walk, moving from one big boulder (some with some big gaps between them) with steady ease, only occasionally pausing and taking Jim’s hand to step over a particularly large distance between rocks. As I watched him, my mind was filled with images of 5-year-old Charlie in his little blue Teva sandals gripping Jim’s hand and sometimes needing to be carried; I recalled our worry about Charlie slipping and falling and here he was, at 11, moving like a billy goat over a rocky mountain.

On the walk back (after one last swim) Charlie remembered that we were, after all, leaving, and started calling out for the beach house and the red boogie board. As we drove away over the bridge, he looked back, saw that his view was blocked with the big yewllow boogie board and a beach chair, and started pushing everything and crying (and somehow the car’s tailgate got loosened and we had to make an emergency stop). The Parkway was not too busy so we got on and he cried, cried, and cried, and a couple of times there were some extra vibrations throughout the car. We suggested taking deep breaths, Charlie wrapped himself in a fleece blanket and called for the beach house, and Jim got off the Parkway and onto a local road which brought us to a gas station offering gas for $3.39 a gallon and Charlie started looking around and stopped crying.

We continued a more gradual transition by visiting a boardwalk where Jim and Charlie rode the swings and a whale-size version of  the Frog Hopper and then Charlie had rice and shrimp and poked at some coleslaw at a picnic table while people fished nearby. We got back on the Parkway and all was peaceful until we were ten minutes from home and Charlie started shouting out his anxiety, again and again calling “beach house!”

And I told him I was glad he was doing this. The memory of a boy unable to express himself and speak is ever fresh. Charlie doesn’t have too many words, and not enough to explain what must be complicated feelings about going to and leaving a place he loves as much as the ocean. But he’s trying and the results are imprecise and not enough, but every year there’s more he can tell us, in his speech and in other ways. With every visit to the beach, Charlie shows how he’s grown over the year.

When we got home, the trunk of the black car (a stationwagon) was stuck and Jim had to lower the back seat and pull everything out. He left the big yellow boogie board and beach chair by the car as he hauled everything else in. At first Charlie ran straight to his bedroom, asked for his yellow blanket, and howled for ten minutes—-then got up, went outside, and carried the boogie board and beach chair inside. When I put the board in the kitchen to get it out of the way in the living room, Charlie set it in the hallway, not far from his bedroom door. Then he poked in the (very empty) refrigerator, told us “good night” and went to bed peacefully, his toy Leapster (which he’d been carrying everywhere while at the beach) beside his pillow.

A rocky voyage home, yes, but I think we’ve come back safely to harbor.