August: Endings or Beginnings

 

Last month was a wild roller coaster ride up to the very last day.  If you add in the last three days of June (28-30), the past 34 days have been...intense!  It started with a 3rd quarter tax bill that forced me into reality and ended with the closing on a house that my mother bought nearly 29 years ago (give or take a couple of months).    My time at the barrier island which started in July of 1972 (and lasted only for a week) concluded yesterday.

My parents had always been beach people (or at least as far as I can recall).  When I was young, we, along with my maternal grandparents, would travel to Harwich Port, MA in the summer.  (That's Cape Cod if you didn't know.)  I don't know how long we stayed; I don't have that many memories (sadly).  This was all before I was 6 years old.  What memories I do have I chronicled back in 2015 (https://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/memories-of-melrose.html), which in itself is a long time ago.

We came to Jersey Shore because my mother was pregnant.  She didn't want to travel all the way to Massachusetts in her condition.  My parents had friends who owned a house at the shore and they connected my parents to a local real estate agency for summer rentals.  (An agency that is long gone and whose name escapes me.)

I know for that first summer we were there for a week or maybe 10 days...it couldn't have been more than 2 weeks.  It was a small house; like all of the houses at the shore were at the time.  It was 2-1/2 blocks from the beach and another 2 blocks from the bay.  It was on a little lake, and I think we would swim there.  (Back then you could...back then you could also safely swim in Barnegat Bay as well.)  There were three bedrooms; two with bunk beds.  TV was practically non-existent, so we read a lot and played games.  (I recall rainy day Monopoly.)  I remember getting a hermit crab from the local bait and tackle shop, which I believe got out of its cage (sans shell) and died.  I was never that big a fan of hermit crabs.

We rented that house for several years.  One week turned into two and then more; eventually becoming the month of July (sometimes with the last few days of June tacked on).  For reasons unknown to me (but I suspect that the owner of the house wanted to spend more time in it), we started renting a house across the street.  (A house that was not on the lake, but on a lagoon that required some skill when sailing out of the area and onto the bay.)  We may have rented this house for a couple of years or maybe only a year; I don't know.  What I do know is one summer when we were there it rained non-stop for almost the entire month of July.  I was miserable.

There were several houses over the years.  Most of  them in the same general area.  There were only 2 that I can recall that weren't in the "7th Avenue area."  I remember the little red house on Broad where I watched (then) Prince Charles marry Diana Spencer.  I remember "roasting" myself on the balcony of a two-story house (which was then very exotic) to get a good tan/burn.  (Hey...it used to be a thing...now we know about skin cancer).  The house with the giant fan in the attic wall that would bang like crazy every time a good wind came up.  And the house that we rented right before my mother was able to buy her very own house for the entire summer.  It was two family; we rented the downstairs and the lady who owned the house was upstairs.  We shared a washer, but there was no dryer and the "old lady" who lived upstairs didn't have a dryer and wouldn't buy one, so my mom did, which both families used.  

And then there was "THE" house.  The house that my mom bought in November of 1995, almost a year after her mother's passing, which gave her the money to purchase it.  A small ranch, which was not at all unusual at the time.  Now, nearly thirty years later it is an anomaly.  It's surrounded by large homes (dare I call them McMansions?) lifted high up in the air.  (Something my mother refused to do as both she and my father had mobility issues.)  It stands alone; a reminder of decades past when central air was not a thing, window units were rare and the cool breezes of the ocean were embraced with windows wide open.

This home has passed out of my hands and into another family's.  I'm under the impression that it will be torn down and replaced with something that fits the current shore landscape.  While that may make me sad, it makes sense to me.  The house, lovely as it is, is a relic of the past.  A reminder of what once was, but no longer is.  As a friend (who just so happens to be one of the daughters of the family that introduced us to the island) said to me:  "I mourn the old...  The small cottages…The neighbors we loved, and those who have passed on... So much loss."

So I do mourn.  Not the selling of the house and not the tearing down and rebuilding, but I mourn the idealized summers at the beach of the past. I realize that what I hold in my heart and memory are not total truth.  (Because to be honest there was plenty of not so great over the years too...times when I was anxious to return home to be with my friends, when I didn't fit into the mold that was the Jersey shore "girl" and when I felt out of step with those of my age.)  I'll remember the "good old days" with the knowledge that:  You can get just so much from a good thing. You can linger too long in your dreams. Say goodbye to the oldies but goodies. 'Cause the good ole days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems" (Thank you Billy Joel)

I don’t know how long my mourning period will last.  (I’m still mourning my parents.)  What I do know is that while I may mourn what (supposedly) was, I’m also ready to look toward the future.  I may be “old”, but I’m not (yet) elderly and there are still plenty of adventures out there to be had.  And I’m getting ready for them.  (Hey life, just give me a little bit of time to “rest” before the next round.)