Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

It’s late afternoon and as usual, there’s a quickening breeze off the water. Umbrellas are flapping. Towels whip around as if possessed. It feels so familiar. The first weekend in August, sitting near the water, watching kids playing with only the faintest awareness that an adult or two has them in view. Yes, the first Sunday in August. The first full day on the water. The first full day of Cape Week.

Year two dreaming of the 32 Cape Weeks that were.

You see, for the second summer I am sitting under an umbrella at home, gazing out over the inland ocean that is Lake Erie and watching someone else’s family and their kids in the water. Social media, for all of its wonders and all of its ability to connect us with our past is at best a mixed blessing this weekend, with all of the memories and accompanying photos of Cape Weeks past. Have you been coming around here long enough to know the stories? I know I’ve told them. The good ones, or at least the better ones. Would you indulge an old man his memories? Perhaps they will trigger good ones of your own. Maybe even kindle a desire to make some. Memories, that is.

Families are funny, aren’t they? Beth and I are both first-borns. More than that, we also ended up being the first in our families to do pretty much all of the standard issue milestone stuff. You know, graduate from high school and college, get married, have kids. Yup, front of the line for all of that. It all seemed pretty regular, and it all seemed to go pretty smoothly until it became clear that we had also become the first of the respective families to acquire in-laws. Now, depending on your particular family in-laws may or may not get a vote on stuff like who goes where on what holiday, but I’ve yet to come across a single family that didn’t include in-laws that had an opinion.

In our case it was equal parts flattering and infuriating: both families really wanted us, well, us and our kids, to be with them for every single major American holiday. Because our families did not live in the same region, let alone state or town, this just wasn’t gonna happen. Our solution was Christmas in our own house, and alternating family homes on Thanksgiving. To try to fill the gap Beth and I proposed a week on the beach to my siblings, and happily they said “yes”. Cape Cod won out over the Jersey Shore beaches of our youth, and Cape Week was born.

One house. Five bedrooms, one for each family. If I close my eyes I can see us through the windows.* My folks look so young. My Dad took up residence at the head of the table, so far from Mom at the other end. A twinkle in his eye as he drank a “forbidden” third glass of wine. There I am holding Randy, my 6 week old son who would become “Randy Pat” that week to avoid confusion with my younger brother, also Randy. Randy Pat is so tiny. There he is next to that 15 pound lobster we got at the Swan River Fish Market. Little Randy is dwarfed by the crustacean! We must have already been to the pediatrician for his ear infection; he’s smiling up a storm at Darric and Timothy with whom he would form the Three Musketeers. No one had more fun than those three boys at any White family gathering, Cape Cod or otherwise. We ate and drank and laughed, 10 adults and 5 children, and had a good enough time to give it another go the following year.

Cape week would live on.

Was it year four or year five? I have my nosed pressed up against the window overlooking the table at breakfast. Uncle Randy, the “Muffin Man” has delivered once again. I see my brother and his family, both of my sisters and theirs and…where are we? Ah, here we come, strolling over from the cottage right next door where we’d rented overflow sleeping space now that there were 7 or 8 grandchildren if my memory is correct. The bedroom that our little family occupied, the largest one in the house, had nonetheless become too small for the five of us to be comfortable so we slept across the driveway in the cottage. My Mom was apoplectic leading up to Cape Week, but by day 5 or 6 she came around, agreeing that we’d outgrown a single house.

Cape Week would live on.

Oh look, there’s the kids’ table in the kitchen. All 10 grandchildren now. All four Moms working the table, some on food prep, a couple waiting table, at least one looks like they’re the bouncer. Mostly keeping Gram at bay from the looks of it. Wait, what’s happening now? All 10 kids are running for the door with Gramp in tow. Ah, you can hear why: the familiar jingle of the ice cream truck can be heard well before it makes its way around the last corner of our little dirt road. If you stand just this side of the hedge you can see them all, sitting on the front porch, smiles outlined by melted Good Humor treats as Gramp gets his annual photo. As time went by the ice cream truck would become a family caravan to Sundae School, which would later become our little version of Uber Eats as the big kids would drive the young ones to pick up sundaes for their parents.

Cape week would live on.

It’s a long story, no? 32 years in all. Another generation of in-laws arrived in the form of spouses for my kids. One summer we even had 3 from the fourth generation. The view through the windows changes as we speed through the years until 2016 and an empty chair. Gramp, the patriarch was gone. Still, the initial reason for Cape Week lived on. We shuffled the seats, gave up the overflow cottage, extended grace to family members from all of the generations who couldn’t make it, and extended our sincere hopes that we would see them soon. It was all so much the same, and it was all so much different. We still had barbecued chicken on the first Saturday night but pizza lost out to chilled lobster and corn on the cob for Friday. Until at last Gram just couldn’t make it over the dunes. August of 2022 would be our last visit to our beloved little beach on Cape Cod.

But you know what? The spirit of Cape Week would live on.

You don’t think I’d take you on an old man’s trip down memory lane, sharing the view through windows blurred by decades of beach spray and the dried tears of both joy and sorrow without a lesson, do you? Of course not. I, we, may never again set foot upon that little beach on Uncle Steven’s Way, but in some way or another we have all been changed by Beach Week. It was a week about family. About choosing family. About making the choice to invest 1/52 or each year into a family. As I look through those windows back in time I ache to see my parents again. But my siblings and their spouses are 6 of Beth’s and my best friends. Our 10 children, none of whom grew up in the same town, know each other so much better than 10 kids from 4 towns have a right to know each other, at least in part because they spend a week together growing up with nothing to do but be together.

Cape Week lives on through all of these friendships.

My folks and Beth’s (who encouraged other gatherings) did their job. They passed along to us a deep knowledge of who our siblings are, and who the in-laws they would acquire would be and become. Those who would become in-laws joined us in full. We who were the middle generation, Randy and Joanne, Tracey and Steve, Kerstin and Jimmy, Beth and I, we did our job. We made the larger family a cornerstone of our lives and demonstrated that in part through our commitment to Cape Week. We came for as long as Gram and Gramp could come. To this day we continue to seek each other out, to look for ways to be together in both happy times and sad.

Cape week lives on for us.

And what of our children? Those 5 there for the first chicken off the Saturday grill and the 5 cousins who joined them? They have now acquired, are acquiring, or are soon enough to acquire another family, in-laws of their own. What do they see when they gaze through the windows at the ghosts of Cape Week? Their parents fought hard and loved harder. What do they see when they look through those windows at the ghosts of us around that dinner table? What do they remember of the countless hours spent in the ocean and on the beach? Do they remember the outbursts of childhood battles revisited or the outpouring of love that thrived despite them? Will they ask the in-laws who have joined the family to adopt the spirit of Cape Week? Will they fight for Cape Week and what it represents?

Will Cape Week and the family that gave it to them live on for them?

The first Sunday in August. It’s Cape Week. I’ve apparently been here for quite a while. The wind has died down as it does each evening. A quiet ocean fills my horizon. Someone took the towels in to be washed. It’s time to take down the umbrellas and bring in the chairs. It’s been two years since we have spent a week together on Cape Cod.

And yet, our generation’s eight spent a week together on vacation last summer and we will gather in September to celebrate the addition of an in-law. Cape Week lives for each of us. I wish for you who are reading this all that was good about Cape Week. All that is good about what Cape Week represents. My wish is that Cape Week may live for you and yours. And mine.

Long live Cape Week.

I’ll see you next week…

*I am grateful to the late, great columnist Dick Feagler of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the inspiration of a house filled with the ghosts of family, past. RIP.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 4th, 2024 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.