Seaside 6: Death Does Not Take a Holiday

I remember the day that Elvis died. Our neighbor, Lisa Marie, who had been named for his daughter, cut through the hedge that separated our yards and appeared at the back door all dressed in black. Even aside from that spectacle, at 15, I was aware enough to get it that something big had happened, but honestly? The guy was my dad's age, and that seemed old enough to die at the time.

Ten years later, when my father did indeed die, here at the beach, after a long illness, 52 years seemed like an awfully short life, and any doubt I may have ever had about that steadily erodes with every passing year that brings me closer to that age.

This week while we've been on vacation, we've received word of the deaths of three celebrities. These days, I'm not a person who pays a lot of attention to celebrity news, but the passing of Ed McMahon and the seriousness of Farrah Fawcett's illness made their way into our meal time conversations. The shock of Michael Jackson's death today at 50 is in another category altogether. The mostly 40-something adults in our group grew up with little Michael and the Jackson Five, Thriller, and moonwalking, and although we weren't really fans, he was an icon of our generation.

In later years, his unhappiness and the strange choices he made seemed to eclipse his accomplishments; in fact, his name was like a universal punchline to my students-- it never failed to elicit a snicker or a giggle-- but I guess it all contributed to the "legend." Even so, I have to wonder if my teenaged nephews will recall his passing at all.

I, on the other hand, would like to revise my own reaction to the death of the King as well as go on the record about the death of his son-in-law, the King of Pop: those guys were way too young to go.

Seaside 5: Daily Devotion

Or... If You Lived Here, You'd be Home

What do you do every single day? My list is not extensive, but it was on my mind as I closed the door to my room in our vacation rental house so that I could write a blog entry. I brush my teeth and shower every day, too, and drink coffee in the morning, but that's about it.

When you're on vacation, it seems natural to think about what your life might be like if you lived in this place instead of just visiting for a week. You walk the beach or sit on the deck enjoying the view and think how wonderful it would be to do this every day. On the flip side, I'm notorious for packing too much whenever I travel, especially if it's a road trip. I just know I can fit all the comforts of home in the back of my station wagon, because you never know, I might need that.

This trip is a little different, because it involves trying to feel at home in a place that actually was my home once. (Minus the ocean view-- when I lived here before, I had to walk two blocks to get to the beach.) After twenty years, the waves and the wind seemed to have scrubbed the town clean for me-- no ghost crabs of the past have scuttled across my path. This week has helped me realize that whether I'm home or on vacation here or somewhere else, it's not the place that makes your life what it is, but rather the other way around.

Seaside 4: Sunscreen Gets in Your Eyes

When we lived down here before, we used to go chicken-neck crabbing all the time. A roll of twine, some stinky chicken, a bucket, and a net would provide an afternoon of entertainment and a good dinner, too. This area has been really built-up in the last twenty years, and even though we're staying way out of town, down the beach and well south of the tourist area, in only 15 minutes you can drive to a brand new Walmart where until recently there was only farm and field. That's where I went today to get the stuff I needed to go crabbing.

The place I live now is too urban for Walmart-- there's no space to build those gigantic stores, so when I walked into the Supercenter today it was like entering a kind of 21st century consumerista village. Tucked into one small corner was a full-sized grocery store; then there was a Subway, a nail salon, a bank, not to mention a huge store with anything else in the world. There was no denying that the gatherer in me was seduced by the bright white availability of so much stuff at such a reasonable price, and gleefully I filled my cart with a bubble wand, three pounds of bacon, and five dollar bath towels, in addition to the items on my list.

As I continued on through the place, though, I started feeling guilty about my feedlot pork and cheap imported goods, and I imagined myself putting everything back and then commandeering the PA system and speaking out against this consuming consumerism, but then I pictured the townsfolk heading over to the garden department and coming after me with pitchforks, and everything really was a good deal, so, shamefaced and silent, I pushed my cart of excess to the car.

And we didn't catch a single crab.

Seaside 3: I Love an Ocean

Today my nephew and I were sitting in the surf. He's almost four and has a healthy respect for the sea; in fact, he's terrified of it, so we were way up at the waterline where the waves could just reach us. I don't usually sit at all at the beach, and I'm not one to sunbathe or nap, either. I like to swim, or beach comb, or play frisbee or catch, or build things in the sand, but sitting still, not so much. Still, there we were, the outgoing tide carving little gullies beneath our heels and butts, and looking around, I noticed that we were surrounded by hundreds of tiny little clams about the size of a baby's fingernail. They were translucent shades of white, orange or blue with the finest of stripes and subtle variations in color. When the water left them temporarily high and dry, they would each extend a teeny, nearly transparent, fleshy foot to flip themselves vertical and then disappear beneath the sand in a blink. Enchanted, I showed my nephew, and we watched them together for a while. I picked a couple up and put them in some sand in his hand, and they buried themselves there. "Isn't that cool?" I asked him.

He nodded. "I love an ocean," he sighed.

Seaside 2: What We Take With Us

I had a beach cruiser when I lived at the beach. What a ride! It was a cool black and pink one-speed Schwinn with high, padded handle bars, a wide, soft seat, nobby tires for some traction in the sand, and flat pedals so you could ride barefoot down the boardwalk. Gosh, I loved that bike.

I thought of my old bike today as I pedaled my new bike down a flat seaside road toward the one little market for miles. (The last thing I did before leaving home yesterday was to fasten it to the back of the station wagon-- no way I was going to the beach without my bike.) I'm still the type that prefers to be riding "somewhere," preferably for a purpose, and my goal this morning was to bring the Sunday papers back to my family. A stiff northwesterly breeze made me glad for the 21 gears, but I was sorry that shoes weren't just an option; it's impossible to ride barefoot on the bike I have now.

When we moved north, I brought my beach cruiser with me, but it was totally unsuited for the roads in my new town; they were way too hilly. I had been warned that I wouldn't get a lot of use out of it in the place that I was moving, but I couldn't let it go. Eventually, I bought another bike, and the cruiser decayed away in a leaky outdoor shed. The chain rusted; the tires went flat; the cushy handlebars cracked, and squirrels chewed through the seat cover and made off with the padding for their nests. I'm embarrassed to admit that eventually it ended up in the trash on another moving day, but I was glad when someone took it before the garbage truck came.

It turned out to be another tragic lesson on the difference between what we need and what we want-- my beach cruiser totally deserved better.

Seaside

Twenty years ago I moved from a sleepy beach town in the south of my state to the busy metropolitan area where I now reside. Not by deliberate choice, so much-- it was all about relationships: who I knew, who I lived with, who I loved. That's how I got to the beach, too. In fact, that's how and why I have ever lived anywhere.

Yesterday I finished packing and cleaning my classroom; I met with my principal, said good-bye to my colleagues, and sat in on an interview for a new teacher on my team. At 5 PM I closed the door on my locked desk, papered bookshelves, and clearly-labeled boxes. This morning we packed the car in a thunderstorm and headed south, bound for that same beach town and a week-long vacation in a big house right on the ocean with my whole family.

This evening our dog chased a ball through the surf, leaving crescents of ragged claw-shaped prints across a field of tiny air bubbles in the flat, wet sand. Tonight the stars fill the sky in a way that is impossible in the light-washed nights of the city where I live. What will tomorrow be like?

Fireflies

Last week, before school ended, I chose this poem as the common text for my classes:

Reverence
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat

and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.

In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:

my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.

The summer imagery really resonated with me, and I thought it might for my students, too. On a whim, I decided that the homework assignment for that evening was to Catch fireflies, but don't hurt them. I wanted them to have that experience and compare it to the poem and write about it themselves. The kids were pretty enthused about the homework that day, but that night, there were huge thunderstorms. They were breaking even before I left school, so I knew that many students wouldn't be able to complete their assignment. I scrambled a little to adjust my lesson plan, and as luck would have it, I found this poem:

Virginia Evening
by Michael Pettit

Just past dusk I passed Christiansburg,
cluster of lights sharpening
as the violet backdrop of the Blue Ridge
darkened. Not stars
but blue-black mountains rose
before me, rose like sleep
after hours of driving, hundreds of miles
blurred behind me. My eyelids
were so heavy but I could see
far ahead a summer thunderstorm flashing,
lightning sparking from cloud
to mountaintop. I drove toward it,
into the pass at Ironto, the dark
now deeper in the long steep grades,
heavy in the shadow of mountains weighted
with evergreens, with spruce, pine,
and cedar. How I wished to sleep
in that sweet air, which filled--
suddenly over a rise--with the small
lights of countless fireflies. Everywhere
they drifted, sweeping from the trees
down to the highway my headlights lit.
Fireflies blinked in the distance
and before my eyes, just before
the windshield struck them and they died.
Cold phosphorescent green, on the glass
their bodies clung like buds bursting
the clean line of a branch in spring.
How long it lasted, how many struck
and bloomed as I drove on, hypnotic
stare fixed on the road ahead, I can't say.
Beyond them, beyond their swarming
bright deaths came the rain, a shower
which fell like some dark blessing.
Imagine when I flicked the windshield wipers on
what an eerie glowing beauty faced me.
In that smeared, streaked light
diminished sweep by sweep you could have seen
my face. It was weary, shocked, awakened,
alive with wonder far after the blades and rain
swept clean the light of those lives
passed, like stars rolling over
the earth, now into other lives.

After reading the poem, I gave them the choice to describe either the storm or the fireflies in their choice of poetry or prose, and the results were lovely. I thought it was one of the more successful writing exercises of the year. In the hallway between classes, though, I overheard two students talking. "What are we doing in English today?" one guy asked another.

"Dude! We're reading a poem about squished fireflies!"