Experiences during the formative years follow you around for a lifetime, and if you're lucky enough to have had positive ones, they provide ongoing sources of mental vacations for those times when you can't get away.
The first time I learned we would be spending a week away from Charlotte during the summer to go to the beach with the entire family--including two aunts, uncles, cousins, and my grandmother--I was pissed. Being a young teenager, all I could think was that it would diminish the freedom of summer by seven days.
But my parents were good enough to let me take a friend with me, and it turned out to be a great time.
Every year for a number of years after that, my grandmother continued to rent this large house on Atlantic Beach, North Carolina for the purpose of bringing her family together as the matriarch and preserver of traditions. The large porch was equipped with rocking chairs, and the long wooden boardwalk stretching down to the beach gave an open invitation to the rough surf everyday. Always this beach seemed to exist as it must have for millions of years, without crowds of people, hotels or commercial establishments.
Of course most of our time was spent on the beach itself; or on the deck looking at the sea, feeling our hair coated with salt and imagining what was swimming out there near the horizon; or propped up on the boardwalk rail marveling at the clear, star-filled sky untarnished by light pollution. It always seemed windy at night.
A few mini-excursions came to be anticipated, some with joy and some with a strange nostalgia not entirely inspired by favorable expectation...
An older cousin-accompanied trip to Jungle Land, a mini-golf and bumper boat adventure that we always did at night. I can remember how magical the artificially colored water looked--this sensory experience mixed with the distinctive smell of gasoline dissolved in sunscreen that was still lingering from a day on the beach.
A sweltering exploration of Fort Macon, which was always reserved for the hottest day of the week. My uncle would tease us relentlessly about making the short drive there until one early afternoon the inevitable summons arrived.
A visit to the towns of Beaufort and Morehead City, where restaurants that have been part of family summers forever, along with little shops and nooks along the Sound, were waiting to be re-discovered. In those "must buy a t-shirt everywhere" days, it was a paradise considering the possibilities.
One evening we went to the mysteriously named Radio Island, surrounded by the Sound, to hunt for "specimen." I always admired my family's knowledge and love for nature, and my uncle, who was a judge, was famously entertaining on his vacation days. He strapped a headlamp on so he could more carefully identify little shrimp and marine life in the tidal pools. I remember the feel of the sand stinging my ankles as the wind whipped up around us.
When my grandmother became too elderly and physically challenged to organize the trip, we were also getting to an age where things were fast becoming too complicated to coordinate over several families.
We would all miss out and think back on those times with such fondness.
I'll never forget my gratitude to my grandmother for many things, and these summer weeks live in a place of my consciousness only reserved for love and innocent, untethered happiness. I go there often in my mind.
This year, my father rented the same house on Atlantic Beach. We haven't been there together for over 15 years.
Sunday we'll meet my parents and my brother's family there. What will the week bring? Surely we'll be equipped on arrival with tales from past years and the intentions to visit Clawson's, the Fort and other fond remembrances. But we'll also carve out new stories, built from experiences driven by a different time and a different place in our lives.
I only hope they will leave a similar lifetime impression for D-Man, who is just around the age I was when I experienced the first summer at my Grandmother's Beach.
