Y Chromosomes at the Beach

Question: What do guys do with their time at the beach?

Answer: Dig holes, of course!

This is the beginning of Ian's hole. By the time he finished it was twice this deep, fifty times as dangerous, and the product of Hugh, Chip, Guy, Hank, Jeff, Brent, and Troy. Guys like a challenge, and it's guys of all ages, too.

I spent the afternoon kayaking in the Pea Island Nature Reserve with Hugh and Susette. This was a blast, except that we decided to explore an inlet that got progressively narrower. By the time it closed off completely, there was absolutely no way I could turn around. I had to back the SS Diet Dew all the way out. It's very hard to steer a 17-foot kayak, backward.

What To Do on a Cloudy Day

A day of clouds and showers actually meant that our crew went to the beach -- none of them were up for more sun just yet, especially Chip and Guy, who could more aptly be called Crisp and Fry. I am amazed at the way all of them revert to some sort of inner eight-year-old (in a good way) at the beach. Here they are digging holes at the tide line. No one knows why.

I was getting in touch with a different kind of inner child this afternoon. I decided it was time to take the SS Diet Dew out on the sound, but that meant I had to hose the spiders out of it. The word "hate" is not strong enough for how I feel about spiders. Abhor comes closer, but it lacks that certain element of creeping disgust and horror. At one point I distinctly remember yelling DIEDIEDIEDIEDAMMITDIE! I had to bludgeon one, finally, with an oar.

The point is, I do not want to find a spider that I somehow missed when I am 600 yards from shore in a fairly brisk chop. It's important to KILL THEM ALL.

Okay, better now. Kayaking on the sound is one of the reasons I'm here. It's the most pleasant of occupations, gliding silently over a moonscape populated by hermit crabs and eelgrass. The world becomes a silver sheet of water under a silver sky, every stress reduced to the rhythm of the paddle.

I decided to visit the sunken barge first -- a deliberate wreck that has become a haven for crabs of all sorts. I always forget how long it is -- probably fifty yards. One end sticks up above the water, but it goes on for a while underneath, covered in oysters and scuttled over by spider and wharf crabs. I let the wind push the SS Diet Dew against the far end, and sat watching crabs, who were watching me. A whole lot of deep things can be summed up in the solemn gaze of crabs who are waiting for signs of a dip net.

Fireworks on the Fourth

Our fourth-floor loft has a porch outside, and most of us gathered there at dusk to watch the fireworks. From that lofty height, we could see the small, silent, blooms of fireworks all the way down in Hatteras, plus the much larger illegals that people still set off here in Rodanthe. Our main goal was to watch the big show that was going on at Avon Pier, about 22 miles south. (And it is amazing that we could see the fireworks in Hatteras (40 miles south), Avon (22 miles south), Nags Head (24 miles north) and Manteo (36 miles northwest). Flat has its uses.)

The bulk of the house was behind us, to the north, and it blocked our view of the neighbors, which explains why Suzanne's boyfriend, Brent, did the "duck and cover" maneuver when they set off some huge and wholly illegal fireworks next door. He said, and I quote, "I couldn't see the lights! I thought it was gunfire!" There's a lot of him, and he folded up like a Japanese fan. Fortunately, he was among friends who will let him live this down sometime. Maybe. Before he's old.

How To Deal With Loud Noises at Night

Last summer, when I complained to my sister about the dawn drum circle at Floydfest, she suggested earplugs, which I dutifully bought, and they have become the can't-do-without solution to everything. I go to bed, put in the earplugs, and then even the thumps and bumps of all our kids playing games don't faze me.

What does faze me, though, is the fire alarm going off at two a.m. Hank and I scrambled into the hallway, to find Sarah and Katie already there, while Suz was sitting up in her bunk, holding her ears with both hands. We didn't smell smoke, so Hank trooped upstairs and managed to shut the alarms off. (They're hardwired, one in each bedroom, one in the kitchen, one up in the loft, and one in the hall. They make an AMAZING racket.) Everyone went back to bed, but then I got worried, so I sent Hank out to look for signs of trouble. I remembered the story of the bird's nest in the outside light that started a house fire.

Nothing. He came back to bed, and the earplugs went back in. To my own amazement, I was able to go right back to sleep, and at seven-thirty this morning, woke up still alive and un-roasted.

Oh, and it's worth mentioning that the hullabaloo utterly failed to wake up Chip and Guy. Yes, they slept through the alarm making a high, piercing whistly sound in their room, plus all of the rest of us stomping about looking for flames. I don't know whether to be in awe of how soundly they sleep, or worried that they aren't ever going to be able to get themselves up.

Rodanthe, 2009

It's a quarter to eight, and I'm savoring the quiet moments in the house. Everyone is out playing basketball. Ian and Jody just arrived, after an 11+ hour drive from western Pennsylvania. I am NOT outside playing basketball, because I want to keep my blood in my body, where it belongs. There are clouds of mosquitoes out there -- even with bug spray, it's pretty intense.

Sarah, Suzanne, Katie, Jeff, Brent and Troy got here about one. After a quick lunch, we all went over to the beach, even me. It was fun, actually, to watch them play in the ocean, reading in my surf chair, watching the waves. We set up camp high on the beach, and napped and talked for most of the afternoon.

Brent's mom, God bless her, sent spaghetti sauce, spaghetti, oil and cheese, and this made tonight's dinner simple, plus, it saved us from having to drive to Avon immediately for groceries. The meal was fabulous, even more so, probably, because we were starving from all the activity. Now I'm watching the sun drop into the sound and wondering how soon I can go to bed. It's been a long day.

But, naturally, I have a couple of comments for what they're worth. Why does nobody in the Rodanthe/Waves/Salvo area open a real grocery store? I went to three "convenience" type stores looking for salad ingredients, and what I found was some slimy lettuce, two mealy tomatoes, and a bag of iffy carrots. I passed on the lettuce, and finally found, at the fourth store, a head of lettuce I'd actually eat. Wouldn't you think that somebody on this island would have fresh vegetables? All you can reliably find is beer, and I hate beer. (Well, except for Bud Light Lime and something to boil shrimp in.)

Comment two: Suz and Brent were in charge of dinner, and we discovered that a huge pot of water on the stove for spaghetti NEVER boils. We cooked the pasta anyway. Sea level messes with stuff . . .

Okay, This Is Really It

It's the last night of our vacation, and we spent a peaceful evening people-watching at Cafe Amadeus downtown near the university. There was a lot of humanity to watch, most of it relaxed and beautiful -- old, young, black, white, brown, golden, couples, groups, dogs -- the usual diversity of an academic community. It seemed like everybody was out enjoying the beautiful evening, eating outdoors in the cafes, strolling around. The only sour note at all was a group all wearing matching yellow t-shirts saying "Sarah and Malcolm: The Wedding Party Pub Crawl." These people were raucously, insultingly drunk, and there were lots of them. They would have been a blight on Bourbon Street. One young woman, jostled and insulted by them, remarked to her companion, "Oh look, !@#%$(*s in matching shirts." We wanted to applaud.

I'm all packed up for the flight home. I had to move all the stuff from my carry-on that is legal on trains but not on airplanes. Basically, you can carry anything you want onto a train; airplanes, not so much. It's been a great week, it really has. I'm going to miss the traveling around, but even more, and I might as well say this here, I'm going to miss the closeness with Hank. We often pass like ships in the night at home -- he goes to bed when I get up, we both have meetings and responsibilities. But here, out in the world together, we have time to laugh, to really talk, to play silly games, and generally be in love. If I could wish for one thing, and I do, it's that we carry some of the carefree spirit we've had this week into the summer ahead.

On the Advisability of Maps

We came to Ann Arbor on this last leg of our trip because Hank has his quarterly EPMG directors' meeting here. That means that today, he is stuck in windowless rooms looking at slides of people's colons. This does not strike me as a good time, so after wrapping myself affectionately around a garden omelet and some coffee, I rented a PT Cruiser (don't judge; it was cheap), and set off for the University of Michigan.

If we were still in Chicago, I wouldn't have the nerve to do this, but I remembered from our last trip that drivers in Ann Arbor are mellow to the point of comatose. They do not honk at you or flip you off if you make a mistake. In fact, they will graciously allow you to turn wherever you want, and I've noticed that they're remarkably tolerant of jaywalkers. For some reason, these mapless forays always end with me on the phone to Kathy, having her look up streets on Mapquest and tell me where the heck I am. The tradition of hotels handing out useful maps of a metropolitan area has really gone by the boards.

What I wanted to do first was go to St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church (cf. "cathedrals") to pray for the son of friends who is in critical condition in a nowhere-near-state-of-the-art hospital in Nepal. (What is it with Nepal? I do not want Christopher to get wind of all this; he's anxious enough as it is.) I discovered that parking anywhere near St. Thomas was out of the question, and of course, one doesn't need a church to pray in, but I was looking for the focused intention that churches bring.

I found it in a huge photograph of a Portuguese cathedral that covers most of a wall in the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The museum was such a serendipitous find. It's small enough to be manageable -- unlike the Carnegie, in Pittsburgh, which needs a couple of days, or the National Gallery, in DC, which could take the better part of a lifetime. Art has to be ingested in small doses. You CAN rip through a musem and glance at everything, but enjoying what you see takes time. You have to be able to walk away, come back, stand and look from different angles, and generally mosey around. The UMMA galleries are perfect for this. I particularly liked line drawings by Gustav Klimt, small Chinese porcelains, and a wall of modern woodcarvings. My favorite thing, though, was a modern sculpture called "Stones from the River." Carved wooden bowls nestle in a low, teardrop shaped bench. The entire installation is about six feet long. When I was there, the sun was just touching the side of it, and it reminded me, for some reason, of Dad. This tiny picture doesn't do it justice, but it was the only one I could find.

After walking through the beautiful buildings of the law school and the elegant Student Union Building, I was headed home, but got sidetracked by the Forest Hill Cemetery, where I spent a happy half-hour lost on the myriad paths. I don't know why people find cemeteries morbid -- they're green and beautiful and full of quiet. This one was immense and full of the light-honey smell of blooming spirea. It was peaceful and gave me the energy to locate Division Street and the only way I knew back to the hotel. I can't expect Kathy to always put her job on standby while she helps me navigate long-distance.