Too Much Effort To Relax At The Beach

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

I remember when a day at the beach was relaxing – when all I carried was a towel, my car keys, a book and a Macintosh apple. I also weighed 115 lbs. and wore a bikini under a gauzy white shirt. That seems like a lifetime ago, and it was.

Now, a day at the beach is an expedition, with hats and umbrellas, extra clothing, sunblock, and food and drink – enough to last several days, if we rationed them carefully. When I told my mother what we cart to the beach, she said, “You’re bringing the whole kitchen!” I didn’t tell her about the small library of books and magazines that I tuck between the towels or the virtual TV set and movie screen available through my i-phone.

This weighty accumulation of beach gear started after I was married, and pregnant, and needed more than a Macintosh apple to get me through a day at the beach. We bought a little red cooler that would only fit two sandwiches, two apples and two napkins.

My husband carried the cooler and the beach bag that held our two towels and suntan lotion. I carried the bug spray and sprayed him as he called out positions on his body where the mosquitos were landing: My left elbow! My neck! My right knee!

Life was still simple and uncomplicated then.

When the kids came along, we got a larger cooler to hold all the sandwiches, fruit, cookies and Fritos. We took a 48 oz. thermos full of water, a roll of paper towels and a beach bag packed with beach towels, a change of clothes for all the kids, diapers and wipes for the youngest, sunblock and bug spray.

My husband carried the beach bag, the cooler, the thermos, a chair, and our youngest child. The two older boys carried their own towels. I carried the bug spray and a chair.

As the boys got older, they took on most of the load, piling stuff on top of their boogie boards as they dragged them through the sand. That still left me with the bug spray and a chair to carry.

The years went by, and, soon enough, my husband and I were on our own again. You would think, without the children, our load would have lightened up. Instead, we found ourselves bogged down with so much stuff and not enough hands to carry it. One year, we found beach chairs that had packs built into the back of the seat where we could fit a towel, a book and still have room for more stuff. The chairs had straps that fit over our shoulders, turning them into backpacks.

We carried our own chairs, and my husband also carried the cooler, a thermos of water, and our new addition to the beach paraphernalia – a large beach umbrella.

About midway through the summer, I began complaining that my chair was too heavy. I was carrying my towel, a small purse, two hardcover books and a few magazines in my chair-backpack.

“It’s stopping the blood circulation in my shoulders,” I told my husband. “In this heat, I feel like I might faint.” So he carried my chair in his free hand and tucked the umbrella under the arm that was carrying the thermos and the beach bag. That left me with the cooler, which he eventually took from me when I complained that the ice packs inside were making it too heavy.

One morning, we filled a thermos with the leftover breakfast coffee to finish off at the beach. We were hooked. Hot coffee on the beach in the morning, combined with the smell of the cool ocean mist…it doesn’t get any better than that. From that day forward, we added to our beach load: a thermos of coffee, hot cups, sugar, a jar of half and half – and, of course, donuts.

As we watched the sun go down one day, my husband said, “What I wouldn’t give for a nice cold beer right now!”

So, the medium-sized lunch cooler was retired to a shelf in the garage, and, on our next trip to the beach, we brought a large cooler with outside pockets for our morning coffee amenities – napkins, stirrers and sugar packets. The inside cavity was deeper and could hold our afternoon lunch items, and an extra layer of ice packs and loose ice cubes to keep the beers cold for our afternoon cocktail hour. If we packed it tight enough, we could squeeze in a small jar of mixed nuts to go with the beers!

One hot day in July, I offered to lighten my husband’s load and carry the umbrella. After we walked a little ways, I was overcome with the heat. “This is ridiculous!” I said. “We bring too much junk to the beach. Do we really need this umbrella?”

“Is the umbrella too heavy?” my husband asked.

“It’s not heavy; it’s cumbersome.”

“Give it to me,” he said, holding out his hand. I gladly gave it up and he tucked it under his arm.

“It’s not fair, that you have to carry everything,” I said, weaving erratically through the hot sand, trying to follow his long strides. “There’s got to be a better way. We have to lighten our load now that it’s just the two of us.”

I watched his back as he walked ahead of me. Both shoulders had stuffed beach chairs on them. One hand held the overstuffed beach bag; the other held the oversized cooler with the umbrella tucked under his arm. He was a beast of burden, carrying the load for both of us, but I was the only one complaining.

This summer I decided my husband needed some help carrying the massive bulk of beach stuff, so I bought him a beach “buggy” – a collapsible cart with large wheels that enables it to be pulled through the sand. It fits everything we need, plus all the extras we don’t need – and still there is room for more. beach buggyNow we can carry two umbrellas, to increase our expanse of shade and eliminate the annoyance of moving our chairs around to follow a tiny patch of shady sand. (Ugh! So much effort in the heat.)

We took our son with us to the beach recently, and he laughed at our excessiveness. “This is ridiculous!” he said. “You guys take too much crap to the beach!” Then he turned toward me and said, “Look at dad, dragging that cart all by himself. Why don’t you carry something?”

“What am I supposed to carry?” I asked. “Everything is in the cart. That’s the whole idea.” Then I twirled around on my toes with my arms spread out. “I carry nothing,” I said.

“Look at him; he’s struggling to pull that heavy thing.”

“OK. Then why don’t you pull it?” I told him.

“Why don’t you?” he said.

“I’m the woman here; I’m the weaker sex.”

We continued “discussing” the matter while my husband trudged through the sand, pulling the cart in front of us.

At the end of the day, we packed up the cart and my husband began pulling it back through the sand. My son ran over and tried to pull it away from him and the two of them tugged and pushed, in a struggle for control over the beach buggy.

“I’ve got it,” my husband said.

“No; I’ve got it,” my son said.

My husband finally surrendered and walked with me behind the cart.

“You know, we really bring too much stuff to the beach,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “Next year I’m not hauling that clumsy beach buggy around.”

I can’t say that I blamed him, but I also wasn’t about to start hauling heavy sacks on my back, like a pyramid builder, or dragging coolers through the hot sand.

“I’ll get a beach permit for my pickup truck next year,” he said. “That way we can drive everything right onto the beach.”

Now that sounds like an excellent plan! Why didn’t I think of that?

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My Pocketbook: An Emergency Preparedness Cache

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

I emptied my summer pocketbook the other day to move everything into my winter purse. In truth, the words “pocketbook” and “purse” can hardly be used to describe the satchel I carry over my shoulder every day. As I looked over items strewn across the table, I had to ask myself, why do I carry all this stuff around?

Do I need a pocketknife, a mini flashlight, a roll of Burt’s Bees Outdoor Bug Bite Relief, packets of Gas-X, dental floss, band aids, chewable Pepto Bismol tablets, an anti-vertigo pill, eye drops, hand sanitizer, a Tupperware full of non-dairy Coffee-mate, and a travel size toilet paper roll? That’s in addition to all the other “normal” stuff – like a wallet, cell phone, eyeglasses, sunglasses, keys, tissues, toothpicks and breath mints. What can I say? I like to be prepared – for anything.

I can attribute this cache of supplies in my pocketbook to my mother and her lifelong warnings about crises and calamities. She only has to read about or imagine a disaster happening somewhere and she immediately begins outfitting me with emergency supplies.

When my children were very young and were required to sit in car seats, my mother suggested I carry a single-edged razor in my purse  –  in case I ever have to quickly extract the kids from their car seats. She saw a TV program about it. “By the time you fiddle around with those contraptions, it’s too late,” she warned me. “With the razor, you can quickly cut the straps and get the kids out.”

Every time I saw her, she asked, “Do you have a razor in your purse yet – for the car seats?” After several negative responses from me, she finally took matters into her own hands and supplied me with a small pocketknife. “Here; take this,” she said, “until you get the razor.” I still carry the pocketknife, though my youngest child is now 27, and drives his own car. Who knows? I may need it to peel an apple some day.

My mother also gave me a mini flashlight as a precaution – in case I’m ever shopping in the mall and the lights go out. She read a newspaper story about that happening once in a mall – somewhere on planet earth. People couldn’t find the exits because the emergency back up lights were out too. “Now, if that happened to you, and you had a flashlight…” she said, holding one in her hand and offering it to me. How could I say no? If we were shopping together in the mall one day and the lights ever went out, I know my mother would ask me, “Do you have that flashlight I gave you?”

When I was working in Manhattan, I kept the flashlight handy in my purse in case the power went out and I had to walk through those underground subway tunnels that are full of icky things that crawl around in the dark. You think that never happens? It does; and it did.

Back in August 2003, the city had a blackout that lasted several days, and lots of commuters probably wished they had mini flashlights in their possession. Besides the subways and trains shutting down, anything that required electricity was out. Credit card machines couldn’t process purchases as simple as a water bottle or as necessary as a comfortable pair of sneakers to help with the long exodus of hot commuters walking in uncomfortable shoes down city blocks and over bridges. People with mini flashlights and wads of cash did fine; the others were left to fend for themselves, some sleeping overnight on the dirty hard steps of city buildings.

Years of heeding my mother’s emergency preparedness warnings rubbed off on me, and when I took a job in the city, in addition to my regular pocketbook that carried the pocketknife, the mini-flashlight, Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Gas-X and other survival items, I carried an oversized business bag. In the side pockets I stuffed a variety of snacks – granola bars, peanuts, raisins, fresh fruit, a bottle of water and a small thermos of coffee.

Hidden discretely underneath a calculator and a notebook were my personal overnight emergency supplies. There was a phone charger, an extra pair of undies, a clean bra, deodorant, travel size toothbrush, toothpaste and mouthwash, dental floss, tweezers, a razor and my make-up bag. In the summer months, I carried containers of baby powder and Gold Bond Triple Action Foot Powder, as well as an extra roll of travel size toilet paper. The only thing I didn’t pack was a blow dryer. I figured, in an emergency, I wouldn’t care what my hair looked like, as long as I had enough toilet paper to last a day or two.

One day, I reached into my bag to pull out my calculator and had to shove back a pair of panties that got tangled in the calculator tape. The accountant I was working with noticed them and smirked.

“I like to be prepared for anything,” I said.

From the surprised look on his face, I don’t think he understood my meaning, so I went on to explain, “In case there’s a snowstorm or a blackout, and I have to stay overnight.” He looked out the window. It was a balmy summer day, and we left it at that.

I don’t work in the city anymore, so I don’t need all the overnight items, but I assure you, all the items I carry in my current shoulder bag are necessary – if not directly for myself, often for the comfort of others around me.

How many times has someone asked me, “Can I borrow a tissue?” I always have tissues in my pocketbook, but if I give you one, it’s for keeps. I don’t ever want it back.

In the spring and fall seasons, I carry Claritin and a tiny bottle of Systane Ultra Lubricant Eye Drops for myself and for my son, since we both suffer from seasonal allergies and dry eyes. I won’t leave home without Tylenol in my purse. I also carry Advil and Aleve for those times when you just need something stronger.

I even have a small sewing kit in case someone pops a button, tears a bra strap, or needs stitches. Though someone else will have to do that because I can’t stand the sight of blood.

I started carrying a mini spray bottle of bug repellent in my purse this summer after my mother showed me the value of being prepared for any calamity – no matter how small. When we were attacked by a swarm of gnats one evening, as we walked through the park, I noticed that she wasn’t bothered in the least, while I was swatting and smacking myself and cursing up a storm.

“Didn’t you spray yourself before we left?” she asked. Then she pulled out a bottle of Burt’s Bees All Natural Herbal Insect Repellent from her pocket and saved the evening.

I’ll keep the roll of Burt’s Bees Outdoor Bug Bite Relief and insect repellent for another month, until the picnic bees and mosquitos are gone for good. If you’re dairy intolerant, like I am, I will share my Coffee-mate with you. If you’re feeling gassy or have an upset stomach, need a band-aid, have a headache or a case of vertigo, I have a remedy for you in my bag. And if you’re stranded in the ladies’ room with no toilet paper, call my name. If I’m within the sound of your voice, you’re in luck.

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The L A S T Summer Weekend

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

Although summer won’t officially end until September 23rd at 4:21 AM, most people think of Labor Day Weekend as the end of summer. If you are one of those people who become melancholy at the end of summer, you can make yourself downright crazy watching the clock on this website as it ticks down the seconds left until summer ends.

As for me, I could care less. Summer was never my favorite season. As a youngster, I was often bored during the long hot summer months, and actually looked forward to cooler weather and the beginning of a new school year.

Then I married a man who hated school and passed his childhood dread onto our children. The day before school started we always made one last trip to the beach – rain or shine. Then he would bring the kids close to tears saying things like, “This is the last day of summer,” and “This is the last day of our vacation,” or “This is the last time we will be on the boat until next year.”

After a while, this seasonal anxiety transferred to me and I found myself yearning for one last summer day at the beach. And that’s exactly what happened one balmy September day when, daydreaming out my office window, I e-mailed my husband to tell him we just had to go out on the boat for one last swim before summer ended…

I raced home, that afternoon, to slap some leftover chicken between slices of bread, threw a cucumber and some cherry tomatoes in to dip into hummus, then boiled water for a thermos of tea.

“Should we bring a bottle of wine?” my husband asked.

“Nah. Let’s just throw in some beers and get out of here before the sun goes down.” Bringing wine would have meant taking precious minutes to carefully pack two wine glasses, because my husband won’t drink wine from a plastic cup. In hindsight, we should have packed a few bottles of wine.

We arrived at our “little spot” on the Great South Bay – a hidden cove we had found the week before, located behind “Cow Island,” just east of the Amityville cut. While eating our chicken sandwiches, we laughed to ourselves at the wonder of being completely alone like this anywhere on Long Island.

“I won’t throw an anchor,” my husband said. “The tide is going out, so we’ll just drift into deeper water until we reach the channel. By that time, it will be dark and we’ll be ready to head home.”

“It seems awful low here,” I said, looking over the side of the boat. “Are you sure we won’t get stuck?”

My husband, an auxiliary Coast Guard member, chuckled, “Don’t you think your captain knows what he’s doing? Just relax and enjoy the last sunset.”

I should have known something was wrong when he finished his sandwich in two large hurried bites then jumped up suddenly to grab the one oar he keeps on the boat. He stumbled and landed his big toe in the hummus and I threw my cucumber overboard to the fishes.

“It was just my toe,” he said. “The rest of the hummus is still good.”

“No thanks; I’m done.”

I stretched out and relaxed, enjoying the last sunset -as he had instructed me to do, while he went to the bow and began rowing and testing the water’s depth with the oar. I wondered why he wasn’t relaxing, too, but then I closed my eyes and soaked in the silence, interrupted by the occasional gentle ripple of the oar pushing through the water and the distant call of seagulls. The crickets were getting louder so I knew we were drifting closer to the island. Something wasn’t right.

“We’re a lot farther away from the channel than I thought,” my captain called out from the starboard side.

“You know we’re going in circles,” I informed him, “and the mosquitoes are starting to bite.”

I covered my head with my hood to keep the little buggers out and closed my eyes, drifting into a gentle reverie, only to be awakened by the sound of a clumsy splash. It sounded like my captain had jumped (or fallen) overboard.

“Move up to the bow,” my captain called to me from somewhere in the water. “I need your weight up front while I pull the boat.” Happy to accommodate him, I lounged in the vee seat in the bow, observing how much lower the depth had become, how much darker the sky was and how little progress he had made with that one oar.

“Why is it getting lower?” I asked. “Didn’t you say we would be drifting into deeper water?”

My captain responded with a firm command: “You’ll have to get out of the boat now and help me push, or we’ll never get out of here until the tide comes up at midnight!”

It was dark now and I couldn’t see what was in the water – jellyfish? crabs? seaweed? Did he really expect me to jump into that dark water? Did he take me seriously last weekend when I playfully called him My Captain and assured him that when we were boating he was “my commander” and I would follow his orders – no matter what? The alternative was to sit out here on this dank dark night and get eaten alive by mosquitoes.

“Let’s go!” he bellowed from the water. “Now!”

I pushed at the back of the boat while he pulled in the front. Then he moved to the back and we both pushed. And at some point my foot landed in some mucky mush that pulled me down like quicksand. I screamed and let go of the boat, falling back a few paces.

“What happened?” my captain called out, as he continued grunting and pushing by himself.

“I stepped in some mushy muck!” I stood there waiting for him to come back for me, but he ignored me and just kept heaving his weight behind the boat. “Wait for me!” I cried. “Don’t leave me out here alone!”

Then my heart sank at the sound of sand pressing into the hull as the dead weight of our 17-foot boat was firmly marooned in a sand bank, engulfed in the pitch-black of night and desolation in the Great South Bay. Hidden here behind Cow Island in our cozy “little spot” no one would find us until the sun came up, and, it being September, chances were slim that anyone would find us the next day.

I thought about the wine we left at home and longed for a long deep swig – straight from the bottle.

The look of defeat clouded my captain’s eyes as he stared off into the night.

“NOW WHAT!” I screamed. He snapped out of his trance and began to shimmy the boat from left to right and I followed his lead. We were slow dancing with the boat, creating a rhythm of motion as I was whispering endearments to it under my breath: come on, baby, let’s go, let’s get out of here, we can do this! I chanted it over and over like a prayer of the faithful hoping for a miracle.

At last! I felt it loosen and the water was suddenly up to my knees. “Can I get back in the boat now?” I asked timidly at first, and as the water inched up to my thighs I was almost in tears as I cried out, “NOW? Can I PLEASE get back in the boat?” And then those beautiful words, my captain’s orders: Get back in the boat!

The sound of the engine starting in deeper water made me laugh out loud with happiness. I didn’t care that I was covered in muck and stunk like a dead fish; just spotting the green and red buoy lights of the state channel meant we would be home soon. So why was my captain heading away from the buoys?

The engine stalled and we hit bottom again. Then I remembered, the captain was colorblind. The oar came out again and I guided him back to the colored buoys. I heard him click the switch to turn on the boat lights but saw no lights. He tried over and over, and I realized all the clicking in the world wasn’t going to turn those lights on as I panicked and called out to alert the captain of an approaching boat.

“Don’t worry; I see him!” he shouted out above the roar of the approaching engine.

“I see him, too!” I screamed, “but he can’t see us because we have no lights!”

I grabbed a life jacket and clumsily fumbled with the strap to adjust it to my girth. Worst-case scenario, with the life jacket on, at least they will find my body after the crash, I reasoned. I saw my grandchildren’s faces flash before me. I thought of all the people I loved in my life and said farewell. I closed my eyes and prayed…Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee…

I was silent for the remainder of the ride home. My life jacket was so tight I could hardly breathe, let alone speak. My heart took awhile to get back to a normal pace. Before my captain could finish tying up the boat, I jumped onto our dock, and in a final gesture of farewell to summer, I flung my ruined wet, muck covered sandals across the lawn.

That was the last time I would wear them. That slow dance with the boat was, undeniably, my last swim of the summer. As for my captain, those were the last commands he would issue me, and the last time I would call him “captain” -until the following year.

~

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Emptying The Nest – When The First One Leaves For College

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Christine Vanderberg

My cousin’s daughter went off to college this week. She posted pictures on Facebook; one in particular held my interest for a long time. In it, my cousin and her husband are standing in the doorway of their daughter’s college dorm room, waving goodbye. My cousin has a big smile on her face, and her husband’s lips are a straight line sealed tight.

The wave goodbye

The wave goodbye

I knew my cousin had a huge lump in her throat, despite the big smile, and I saw the sadness on her husband’s face, as he tried to control the emotion he was feeling at that moment. I also knew the second they turned around and headed back to the car, the tears would begin to flow.

My first child went off to college this very same week, back in 1995, and though we didn’t take a picture of that parting scene, we shared those same painful emotions. I remember swallowing that huge lump in my throat as we drove off and I watched our son waving goodbye, his body getting smaller and smaller, as we drove away from the school parking lot.

At the time, I remember thinking I’ve done this before. This scene is all too familiar, as my mind flashed back to his first day of Kindergarten back in 1982…My five-year old son with his new vinyl schoolbag in hand, wearing an orange shirt, tan shorts and a dessert-sized white paper plate hanging from his neck with his name written in thick black crayon.

I remember thinking, if only he didn’t have to wear that ridiculous paper plate around his neck. He slumped his shoulders forward and hung his head the moment I slipped it on, as if his neck was carrying such a heavy weight.

I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him in that unfamiliar place in the hands of strangers. I lingered as long as I possibly could, squeezing my fingers through the chain link fence to watch him line up with the other children, some of them wailing out of control.

Then the dreaded moment had arrived and the line started moving forward into the building. I stood there anyway, watching his back as he shuffled in line, his head hanging down, watching the ground and following the child in front of him. When he got closer to the door, he stopped and turned around to look for me. When our eyes locked, his face brightened for an instant and I threw him a fake smile and one last energetic wave.

My eyes had already started to fill up, but I hoped he hadn’t seen that from the distance. Then, his mouth turned down into that little frown I knew so well. He held onto that frown as he lifted his hand up to give me one slow weak wave back. Then he was gone.

As I pushed the stroller back home, I let the tears fall freely. I must have sniffled and gasped a few times because my two-year-old turned around to ask, “Mommy, you crying?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m sad because Peter had to go to school.”

“Don’t be sad, mommy; be happy.”

“Ok,” I told him as I wiped the tears off my face. “I’ll try.”

And then, a few moments later, he asked me, “Are you happy now, mommy?”

I had to laugh out loud because in his simple request that I “be happy” now, I thought to myself – could it be that simple? Is being happy simply a choice we make?

I took a few deep breaths to clear my head and found myself smiling at the thought that we had made it through one of the major milestones in my son’s life – his “leaving home” for a full day at school. Nowadays, children attend Nursery and Pre-K for years before Kindergarten. But, back in 1982, this was a huge step for both my son and me.

That day, I looked down at the little head bobbing in the stroller in front of me and I realized these children, born to me, are not mine to keep. I am only their guardian, for a short time. My real job as a mother, from the moment they are born, is to prepare them to leave – to give them a strong foundation of love and moral guidance – so that when it is time for them to go, they can take that leap out of the nest and fly smoothly through whatever obstacles life throws in their path, without crashing to the ground.

That first break from home is the hardest one. So that, by the time they move away to college or to their first apartment, or to another country, hopefully, we parents have come to terms with the fact that we do not own our children and we must some day let them go.

By the time we dropped our son off at college in August of 1995, I was excited for him to get started on his life – away from us – to become the man he would be. My husband had different feelings.

Waving goodbye from the car window and not wanting to lose eye contact, I unbuckled my seatbelt and twisted my head out the window until cars and traffic blotted him out of my sight.

I swallowed the lump I had been holding in my throat, took a deep breath, buckled my seatbelt and smiled.

“Well, he’s off. That’s done!” I said, running a mental list of all the things we had shopped for and packed up in the past few weeks. Did he pack his toothbrush? I wondered. It’s the little things you forget on these big moves.

It was then that I heard my husband sniffling. “Do you have any tissues?” he asked.

I looked over at him and saw his face covered with tears, his eyes overflowing.

“Are you crying?” I asked in disbelief. “Why are you crying?”

“Why do you think?!” he said. “Give me some tissues; I can’t see where I’m going.”

“Pull over; I’ll drive! You’re going to kill us!”

“I’m going to miss him,” he continued. “I don’t feel like I spent enough time with him.”

“That’s not true,” I said, and I talked on for the next ten minutes – until the tears had cleared and we were safely on the parkway – trying to convince him that it was time for our son to go, for us to let go, and let him start his own life.

“How come you can handle this so well?” he asked.

“Because I was there on the first day of Kindergarten,” I told him. “I’ve already been through this.” Then, recalling the wisdom of my two-year-old son, so many years ago, I told him, “Let’s not be sad today. Let’s be happy.”

“Is it that simple?” he asked.

“Yes, it is.”

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