This is the week of our annual family pilgrimage to Rehoboth. There are only 41 of us this year spread out over four houses; last year, we had 46 and I’m still trying to figure out who’s missing. 

But I digress. Last year, I found myself thinking a lot about the pandemic, the upcoming presidential election, and ice cream (not necessarily in that order). This year, there is a new, unbidden thought keeps interrupting my beach reveries: I keep thinking about undertows. I have no idea why. As far as I know, there is little or no undertow along this stretch of beach, and if there were, there are plenty of well-trained lifeguards to leap to the rescue. So, I guess it’s not the actual fear of being swept out to sea that’s swimming in my mind; rather, it’s the metaphoric quality of the undertow phenomenon that’s driving my little train of thought.

An undertow is the current beneath the surface that sets seaward or along the beach when the waves are breaking on the shoreline. Undertows don’t actually pull you under; they just sweep you far enough away from shore to exhaust you. Should you get caught in an undertow, the experts remind you to remain calm and to swim diagonally back toward the beach. Yelling for help is another good idea.

But just that applies to the undertows one encounters in the ocean. The reason I’m thinking about undertows now has more to do with their metaphoric manifestation. You see, an undertow can be any underlying current, force, or tendency that is in opposition to whatever is apparent. Like refusing to wear a mask in the face of another Covid surge, or rejecting the results of a fair and free election, or going out for ice cream when you’re trying to lose weight. 

There’s another dimension to all this, literally another dimension. Undertows don’t usually end in disaster for a swimmer. They might make it difficult to exit the water or result in an embarrassing near-shore rescue by a lifeguard who looks young enough to be your grandchild. An undertow’s more dangerous cousin is the riptide—a current on the surface of the ocean that can sweep even an experienced swimmer far enough out to sea to make it impossible to get back to shore, as well as to make rescue by that buff young lifeguard much more difficult. Undertows are subtle; riptides are as apparent as they are dangerous.

Now it turns out that one of the 41 family members gathered in our circle in the sand actually was a trained lifeguard on this beach for six seasons. I asked him about riptides and undertows: were they common phenomena? How was he trained in the art of rescue? And what was the purpose of that ubiquitous little buoy that trails behind a guard on a rescue mission. His answers were precise: assess the situation and the ability of the swimmer caught in a current; if indeed a rescue is required, swim parallel to the current and only enter it at an angle; use the buoy to encircle an exhausted or panicked swimmer and give him/her something to hold onto other than the lifeguard’s head. That all seemed like good advice to me and gave me even more metaphoric food for thought: when encountering some poor soul’s problem, assess the situation; enter the danger zone cautiously; and have all the tools you need when you decide to tackle someone else’s sticky situation.

In The World According To Garp, John Irving’s masterpiece, one of Garp’s children is frightened of the beach because he has heard there is an “undertoad” living under the waves. As if a strong ocean current weren’t frightful enough; now it has the warty, scary face of a huge frog lurking in the shallows, waiting to pull you under.

I think I’ll go back to thinking about ice cream. Nothing metaphoric about ice cream.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

“Day is done. Gone the sun. From the hills, from the lake, from the sky. All is well, safely rest; God is nigh.” These are the words to the languid, melancholy tune we now know as “Taps.” Most commonly played on a bugle, it was introduced into the military manual by General Daniel Butterfield during the Civil War and was officially known as “Extinguish Lights,” the gentle call that ended the day and told the troops it was time to sleep. Years later, the melody became known as “Taps” because the original call ended with three taps on a snare drum. Those beats are now gone but their resonance live on. There are only twenty-four notes in the haunting bugle call; these days, all too sadly, we hear them played most often at military funerals as they float over the graves of the fallen, one last call before eternal sleep.

Our days are incredibly busy. We lurch from task to task, chore to chore, moment to moment. It’s hard to find any peaceful respite from all the hurly-burly surrounding us. That’s nothing new. More than two centuries ago, William Wordsworth penned the sad truth of this, writing of a world revolutionized by industry, one that “is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers… for this, for everything, we are out of tune.” Maybe Taps is the antidote to this addled state of mind: a calming, reflective, lyrical routine at day’s end to ease our tired brains and lull us to sleep.

I first heard Taps when I was a boy—a summer Indian—at Camp Iroquois, out in the wilds of Western Pennsylvania, not far from Lake Pymatuning. Every evening at nightfall, campers and counselors would gather around the flagpole and wait for the familiar first three notes of Taps to come over the loudspeaker, the signal to lower the camp’s flag. Day was done. Before Taps was played, there was still something running through our veins, some residue of energy that needed to be dispelled into the universe. But as soon as the last three notes sounded—God is nigh—all the air went out of the balloon and the camp quieted in an instant. The sound and fury of a hundred little boys just seemed to dissipate into the cool night air and we headed off to our cabins, tired, happy, and ready for bed. I imagine the banged-up Grumman canoes that lined the waterfront, the half-finished lanyards in the arts and crafts cabin, the tired canvas bases out on the softball field, even the scratched tables and chairs in the dining hall all breathed a sigh of relief, not to mention the weary counselors and staff who had shepherded us throughout the day.

That was a long time ago. But like so much lately, those scenes and sounds came back to me on a flood tide of memory while I was walking across the Eastport Bridge in Annapolis a few weeks ago. I was looking out on a peaceful evening scene: a sky aglow with color, the spire of St. Mary’s piercing the clouds, the reflection of the day’s fading glory rippling across the surface of Spa Creek. I thought I heard someone playing Taps but it was very faint, probably just a passing breeze. For an instant—just an intake of breath, really—I had the impression that maybe we really will find our way through this morass and everything will be alright again, the way it was back at Camp Iroquois when those last three notes sounded.

For that one fleeting moment, God was truly nigh.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

It’s funny how much we forget. I spent countless happy summer hours in my pajamas, chasing fireflies on the lawn in front of our house in Pittsburgh. When it came time to go to bed, my twinkling little friends would accompany me, housed in a mason jar, tiny holes poked in the top, a handful of dry grass on the bottom. I’d fall asleep watching their faint illuminations, then in the morning, I’d let them go so I could capture them all over again.

I hadn’t thought of those twilight summer evenings in years. But when our grandson came to visit last week and saw fireflies twinkling in the gloaming, it all came rushing back to me on a flood tide. At first, I just watched him stalk his prey, swipe the air, then slowly open his hand to see if he had captured one. Absorbed in the moment, time stood still for Gavin, but it my mind, it hurtled back to one of my childhood’s most magical moments—safe, carefree, sublimely happy. I couldn’t help myself: I joined the party.

Fireflies or lightning bugs? Apparently, the answer depends on where you live. In New England and out in the West, the term of choice is firefly, while in the South and in the Midwest, people tend to call those little flying lanterns lightning bugs. Theories abound on this difference of nomenclature, but to a kid, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. All they know and see is that tiny dot of yellow light, hanging on a puff of air, winking a signal to attract a prospective mate. They hardly care that it’s the males who tend to twinkle while they fly; the females wait in the grass or on the leaves of a tree and when they see a signal they like, they respond with a blink of their own—nature’s way of saying, “Here I am. C’mon over” And so it goes…

I did a little more research. The life cycle of the firefly lasts about a year. As summer wanes, females lay their eggs in sheltered spots. It takes about three weeks for the eggs to incubate before they hatch as larvae. Believe it or not, the larvae are carnivorous, feeding on spiders, snails, or other insects. They spend the winter months underground in a protected environment, their pupal form slowly developing wings. By late spring or early summer, they emerge as adult fireflies. Up, up, and away they go; the cycle begins anew.

But all that is mostly grown-up gobbledygook to a kid out chasing fireflies on a summer evening. The magic is in the moment and the science behind it is something to put away ’til later. How sad that sense of wonder fades as we grow older; what a blessing it was to trip over it again after all these years.

Memory unlocks, a door on rusty hinges. One of the great joys of being a grandparent is that occasionally we get to vicariously experience a moment of childhood all over again. We watch the grandkids at play and suddenly we’re transported back to a time when there was nothing more important than a bedside jar of fireflies. All those memories are still down there, biding their time, waiting to glow on a warm summer evening.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

 

Billionaires are floating around in space while down here on Planet Earth the temperature hit 130 degrees in Death Valley the other day. The pandemic refuses to leave us alone and the political scene is as corrosive as ever. Should we think critically about race or not think at all? There are plenty of serious questions to ponder out there, but when you’re eight years old, it’s summer, and sailing school starts in the morning, maybe it’s ok to get a little giddy.

How I envy these two: grandson and grand niece to us, cousins to each other. For a week, they’re here visiting us while learning how to tie some sailors’ knots or how to rig their own boat. They’ll practice man-overboard drills and learn how to bail out a swamped boat. Perhaps most importantly, they’ll discover for themselves the ancient and magical alchemy that turns something as elusive as wind into practical forward motion.

When I was their age, I was a paddler, not a sailor. My vessel of choice was an old aluminum Grumman canoe, not a rigged Opti. I relied on strokes, not sheets. I dreamed of rivers and lakes, not bays and oceans. And, like these two, I was happy!

It’s sad, but true: we unlearn happiness. Silliness and joy give away to seriousness and purpose. It’s as though the more we learn, the heavier the burdens become. Year by year, the toll mounts and suddenly the full weight of our adult responsibilities sits on our shoulders like Merlin’s ravens, drowning out the laughter of children with their raucous cawing.

Maybe that’s too harsh. There are some people who manage to retain the glow and promise of youth even as they age. I should know; I’m married to one. Even though she’s now Kiki—her grandmother name—she still manages to impart a whole host of life lessons with a light touch; “Shake his hand; look him in the eye; introduce yourself.” I bet the kids probably don’t even realize they’re learning skills that will carry them into the grown-up world with something akin to social grace. They love her for all-the-more for that because she hasn’t forgotten how to make learning fun.

Maybe sailing school will be like that, too. Our young sailors will learn how to navigate choppy water; how to sail into a headwind; how to right their own ship when things really go south. And it will be fun. Maybe, if they’re really lucky and really good, they’ll even grow up with an appreciation for the power and beauty of things unseen, like the wind.

A few days ago, I made a new friend, an artful sailor who has spent many years on the water. “Why do you like to sail?” I asked him.

“Because it makes me slow down. Sailing isn’t about a timeline or about going from point A to point B in a straight line. You’ve got to figure out the wind and how to make it your friend.” That seemed to like pretty good advice to me and if the kids come away from sailing school with no other lesson than this, the experience will have been well worth the price.

In the meantime, they’re still eight, still silly, still full of giggles. There’s plenty of wind ahead.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

Solitude is hard to find and easy to lose. Jean-Paul Sartre understood it’s capricious nature: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” So did Balzac, up to a point: “Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.” Pooh thought that solitude was the house Christopher Robin went to when he wanted to be alone, whereas Aldous Huxley thought it was more akin to a religion. Me? I often crave it but if I find it, I eventually reject it. Go figure!

By now, you probably know that when I married my wife, I also married her “immediate” family, all forty-nine of them—at least I think that’s the current number but every time I do roll call, I get a different result.  In that hurricane, it’s sometimes difficult to find the eye, but even if I do, I’ve learned that soon enough, the gale force winds will turn in the opposite direction and I’d better hold on. But tempestuous as her clan sometimes may be, they never fail to provide me with a lot of first-hand knowledge about the nature and the multiple manifestations of love. 

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m no hermit, nor am I likely to head off to a monastery in the near future. The Himalayas are way too crowded and high for me. I like people, a few people, anyway. I’m just not wired for big crowds and that has nothing to do with Covid. I’ve always preferred intimate dinner parties and one-on-one conversations to big soirees and gaggle conversations. I guess that makes me more of an introvert than an extrovert, but solitude is a different order of magnitude. Thoreau may have relished his year on Walden Pond, but I would miss the occasional martini night with my mates or the happy gatherings that spontaneously generate on our front porch on summer evenings. But the ability to chat that comes so naturally to my wife is a foreign language to me. I try to speak it sometimes, but my accent is all wrong and my vocabulary, limited. I’m working on it.

The solitude I prefer comes in a variety of forms. I can find it in a book and sometimes, if the book is good enough—like Amor Towles latest novel A Gentleman from Moscow, for example—I can even enjoy a small dose of solitude on the beach despite being surrounded by kids digging in the sand, adults throwing frisbees or drinking beer, often both at the same time.  I’ve even been known to find a corner of solitude in a crowded room. I mentally wander off and if I’m really lucky, my expression doesn’t give me away. I occasionally nod or say, “Uh-huh” which usually works unless the person speaking to me has just asked me if I like kale. Then I’m in trouble.

So if we’re deep in conversation and you see a vacant expression flit across my face, please don’t take it personally. Chances are that if we got into the conversation in the first place, I like you just fine. I’ve just reached my word limit and need to rest my vocal cords or recharge my inner battery for a moment. Or maybe Christopher Robin has invited me over for tea for two.  

Don’t worry; I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

I am Geep. That’s usually pronounced with a soft “G” so it sounds just like the car, but a couple of the grandkids prefer it with a hard “G” and that’s fine, too. Either way, it’s my grandfather name and it has come to define me in ways once hard to imagine but these days, it suits me quite comfortably. In fact, I’m quite pleased with the moniker: it gives me my own special niche in the generational lineup.

The only thing is, I have to make up my “Geepness” as I go along. As the late-in-life child of my parents who were themselves late-in-life children, I never knew either of my own grandfathers. I’ve seen a few black-and-white images of them, but I never heard the sound of their voices, or sat on their scratchy woolen laps, or felt their arms hug me. In one image, there is even the stern face of my own great-grandfather. He fought for the Union in the Civil War (what a textbook example of an oxymoron that is!) and who, in my imagination, must have seen with his own eyes the glory of the coming of the Lord while marching through The Wilderness. That compression of time boggles my mind, although in some ways, it seems to me, that same war is still being contested today, just on vastly different battlegrounds.

We tend to think of time in its linear form, but maybe it’s not quite as long a line as we believe. Just the other day, I sat with four generations of a branch of my in-law tree. Well, to be honest, the fourth generation wasn’t doing much of the sitting. They were running around with water guns and jumping on a Moon Bounce which had been set up in the backyard in celebration of a second-grade graduation, but that’s not the point. There I was, part of a rocking chair lineup with a great-grandfather, a grandfather, and a father, all branches of one tree that is now eighty-eight years old. Think about that; do that math. Granddaddy was born in 1933 when the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl were suffocating America. Herbert Hoover was out and Franklin D. Roosevelt was in, and now here I am, part of that living line, watching the next generation shoot it out with water pistols on a steamy June afternoon.

But I’m just Geep and that’s good enough for me. I can live with the fact that my grandkids already know more about computers than I ever will and are able to navigate a smart television that looks absolutely nothing like the black-and-white set with rabbit ears that was my babysitter back in The Wonderful World of Disney. Now Disney is not Walt; it’s a mega brand with more links in its chain than a sequence of the human genome, which, of course, begs the question, “What’s a genome?” You’ll have to ask one of the kids to explain that concept.

In the photograph that accompanies this Musing, that’s my father anchoring the right end of the front row. His father—my grandfather—is front row, second from the left. My great-grandfather, the Civil War veteran, sits center stage. My father looks to be about eight in this photo so I imagine it was taken about the time the First World War erupted in Europe. That might seem like a long time ago to you, but apparently it wasn’t because if you look closely at the image, you’ll see my own ghostly reflection.

I am Geep.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

Last summer, we had nary a bloom on the hydrangea in our backyard. Apparently, I had pruned them too late in their cycle and so, in a fit of pique, they decided to take the summer off. The wee wife was verklempt. She loves their colors, shapes, and size, and they always look perfect when arranged on the table by our front door. They greeted our guests like those nice old folks who smile and say hello when you enter the local Walmart. We don’t have a Walmart in our little town, but that’s another story for another time.

Anyway, I vowed never to make my pruning mistake again. In my desire to tame the beast, I had literally nipped them in the bud. So I did what I always do when I need to expand my horizons: I googled “hydrangea” and went to school. I got about as far as second grade. By then I had learned that hydrangea are not plants; they’re shrubs. They’re originally Asian, there are several varieties, and they can grow to a height of fifteen feet. All good information, but what about pruning them?

The Google gurus had this to say: “Trimming should be done immediately after flowering stops in summer, but no later than August 1. Do not prune in fall, winter, or spring or you could be cutting off new buds.” (Note the words in bold; googles typeface, not mine.) I had not thought to trim my plants—sorry, my shrubs— after they had flowered the previous year, and I had pruned them in late fall or early winter. I was twice chastised. No wonder they had taken the year off!

So, at the end of the summer—last summer—I did absolutely nothing to our hydrangea. I let them be. All fall and into the winter and spring, I watched and worried. Buds appeared on the old wood, but how would they survive the cold, dark days still to come? Nevertheless, I staid my hand and held my breath.

As winter turned into spring and spring to summer, a wondrous awakening began to unfold. There was new growth on old wood, leaves began to unfold, and then, one morning in early June, I saw the first blossom. That first globe was followed by dozens more and suddenly, the deep end of the backyard was in full bloom again. I was giddy; the wee wife was delighted. We were back in the hydrangea business!

But there was just one little problem: the blooms were very pale, not the cornflower or cerulean blue we longed for. So, I dug just a little bit deeper (so to speak) and learned that hydrangea crave acidic soil. Now I knew just enough to be dangerous: the soil in our yard is very base so I went to the local nursery, explained the problem, and was handed a plastic jug filled with crystals. “Shake a little of this around the base of the bushes…”

“Shrubs,” I corrected.

He looked at me. “Whatever. Shake some of this under your shrubs out to the drip line and give them a good soaking.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it.”

I was dubious but did as I was told. Within a week, the flowers were getting bluer by the hour and new blossoms were exploding on every stalk. My self-esteem returned; I was master of my domain; most importantly, the wee wife had her welcome flowers back on the hall table.

The moral of this story is whatever you want it to be. But this I’ve learned: sometimes less is more. Trim and prune at the right time. Feed when necessary. And never, ever take those friendly Walmart greeters for granted.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

 

Twice in the last couple of weeks, family matters have called me over to the Western Shore. I don’t mind that; it comes with the matrimonial territory of a big family. But what I do mind is that on both occasions, on my way back to the Eastern Shore, I found myself in massive traffic snarls emanating from the Bay Bridge. Sigh.

I like to think that I’m a reasonably patient person, but when it comes to traffic jams, I know I’m not. Whenever the traffic begins to slow, my fingers start to drum on the steering wheel. By the time the traffic begins its stop-and-go rhythm and the crawl really begins, I’m screeching like a tea kettle on the boil. I try to regain my good karma: I play license plate bingo or read bumper stickers, but in a minute or two, I’m back to composing a profane letter to Governor Hogan reminding him of his sworn responsibility to personally facilitate my commute.

Now I’m not going to use this space to debate the merits or location of a new span across the Bay. I’ll leave that work to others: the engineers, the planners, and (God save us) the politicians. What I do want to write about now are the crossings we come to that don’t go as planned. Maybe there’s an accident ahead, or a barrier in our way, or maybe it just isn’t the right time, but for one reason or another—space or time or fortune—we just can’t get across to the other side. We’ve all been caught in that snarl at one time or another.

Part of the problem lies with our expectations. We assume that the lanes ahead will always be open to us, but sometimes, they just aren’t. It’s not our fault, but someone has to take the blame—sorry about that letter, Governor Hogan. Another part of the problem is filed under “Entitlement.” We should all be entitled to a smooth commute and a timely arrival but when neither happens, we feel life has treated us unfairly. We deserve better!

It’s bad enough when the snarl is a singular event, but by definition, traffic jams are multiple happenings. Since everyone is in the same boat, the frustration grows like bad compound interest. Then the jockeying for position begins and soon enough, everyone is sucked into the negative atmosphere of an old-fashioned pressure vacuum tube and the fun really begins. Whoosh!

When it comes to traffic, I wish I were more even-keeled. I wish I had better options. Maybe a good book-on-tape would take my mind off all those idiots in the other lanes. Maybe there is a method of studying Italian that would preclude me from giving dirty looks left and right, but I fear I might just learn all those wonderful Italian curses. I wish I could just find the eye in the center of the hurricane and drive in a state of perpetual bliss, but I guess I’m made of scratchier stuff. Try as I might, I want to get across that damn bridge on my own damn terms so when I’m forced to consider the larger forces at work in the universe, I’m never in the proper lane for beneficial philosophical reflection. No; the pot boils and that’s that.

If I’ve ever glared at you, I apologize. If I’ve ever showed you a certain finger on my right hand, please forgive me. We’re all going in the same direction on this spinning orb, so let’s all calm down, give a wave, and let each other in. We’ll get across…eventually.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eventually, I gave up trying to do the math in my head and went to fetch a piece of paper. Here are my notes:

Pod 1: Solo uno ( “Only one.” Oh: I’m learning Italian in hopes of a trip there later this year, so I’m practicing.) This pod is obviously an aberration; there would usually be sette (seven) but  uno dei nipoti (one of the grandchildren) had a lacrosse tournament somewhere near Havre de Grace (that’s French), so sei (six) went to watch him and solo uno came here.

Pod 2: Absent; missed.

Pod 3: Ditto; still very raw.

Pod 4: Total of otto (eight): La nonna (the grandmother); 2 daughters; 1 husband (the other had to work); quattro grandchildren, including the newest member of the family, la bambina Cameron, making her debut!

Pod 5: Unexcused absence. 

Pod 6: Due nonni (two grandparents), le loro due figlie (their two daughters),  i loro due mariti (their two husbands) e sei nipoti (and six grandchildren). Total of dodeci (twelve)! Pod 6 in the lead!

Pod 7 (ours): Due di noi (two of us); il filgio (the son); la figlia (the daughter), suo marito (her husband), e quattro bambini (and four kids). Total of nove (nine). Second place.

Pod 8: Excused absence; on Fire Island.

Pod 9: La sorellina (the baby sister), suo marito (her husband), i loro due filgi (their two children) e due amici (and two friends). Total of sei (six).

Honorary pods: due cari amici. (Two dear friends).

Did I miss anyone? Probably, but I think that makes trentotto (38) di noi (of us). Ammazza! (Wow!)

(Did I mention that I’ve been learning numbers and pronouns this week?)

Anyway, let’s assume that a) my math is correct and b) so are the numbers and pronouns. “Why?” you ask. Because yesterday, was Cousins Beach Day. I have no idea how to say that in Italian.

When you’re part of a large family, together time is important. Especially this year, after we haven’t really seen much of each other in too many months. So create a moment: un giorno in spiaggia (a day at the beach).

Il tempo (the weather) couldn’t have been better; it felt like estate (summer) again. La birra era fredda (the beer was cold. I learned that in Lezione Uno).

Cousins—in any language—are the glue that holds large families together across time, space, and generations. They create bonds that transcend family pods and distance apart; they are the links in the chains that hold us together. Once upon a time, I saw my cousins regularly usually in the summer at Uncle Dale’s house on Conneaut Lake. I learned to water ski with them. But since then, we’ve drifted apart, scattered like chaff to the winds. Mi mancano. (I miss them.) 

Yesterday, I sat on the beach and watched the generations interact: the moms with their children; the helping husbands; the busy sisters. Easy chatting, probably about la dolce far niente—the “sweet do-nothings” that come with simple times easily shared. If there were a distant nube temporalesca (thundercloud) in the sunny summer sky, we didn’t see it yesterday. But then you never do. Che triste! (How sad!)

Torno subito! (I’ll be right back!)

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com

 

Welcome to June, the month named after Ward’s wife and Wally’s and Beaver’s mother. If you thought the sixth month in the Gregorian and Julian calendars was named for Juno, goddess of childbirth and guardian angel of women, well, think again. Trust me: June is named for June Cleaver, goddess of nostalgia!

Lots of important events take place in Mrs. Cleaver’s month: D-Day, the heroic invasion of Normandy, is memorialized on June 6. June 14 is Flag Day. Juneteenth, the oldest national celebrated commemoration of the abolishment of slavery, is celebrated on June 19, the day in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas and announced the Civil war was over and all slaves were free. That this startling announcement arrived in Texas nearly two and a half years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation is a painful reminder of the lingering stain of slavery on our national soul.

Fathers Day is another June celebration; this year it falls on June 20. My own father passed away many years ago and I think of him often—on Fathers Day and many other days, too. These days, I take great pride in my own son’s good fatherhood, bless his soul.

Hidden among these more significant June days are a host of other celebrations: National Flip a Coin Day (June 1); National Bubba Day (June 2); National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (June 7); Donald Duck Day and National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (both on June 9); National Monkey Around Day (June 14th) comes just a day before National Prune Day (June 15); in an odd juxtaposition, both National Picnic Day and National Panic Day fall on June 18 this year; I could go on: National Kissing Day is June 19, National Selfie Day is June 21, National Catfish Day is June 25, but by now, you get the point. All these National Days! No wonder Congress is too busy to address that nasty, little insurrection at the Capitol six months ago!

But back to Mrs. Cleaver. The world was so much simpler back in those halcyon days. We were lulled into believing that an inquisitive and somewhat naïve boy, Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, could actually formulate so many of life’s imponderable questions. The show, “Leave It to Beaver,” first aired in 1957 and ran for the next five-plus years. It introduced America to an entire lexicon of kid slang: “gyp” meant “to swindle,” “mess around” meant what it meant, a “beef” was a disagreement, and “flake off” or “pipe down” was how Wally told his “goofy” little brother to get lost. But perhaps the most used phrase, “Gee, Beave,” became America’s new punchline. I still use it today to imply wonder.

Among its many firsts, “Leave It To Beaver” was the first television show to display a toilet tank. Let that sink in, so to speak. And because June was such a clean freak—tidiness was one of her hallmarks—how many housewives of the day were enjoined into keeping a neat home and having dinner ready when their poor, tired husbands walked in the front door after a long, hard day at the office. Small wonder that in one episode, Beaver muses that one day he will marry a mother and live happily ever after.

So now you know the history of this new month, thirty days of good, clean fun. The last episode of “Leave It To Beaver” aired on June 20, 1963, just a few months before President Kennedy…; no, not going to go there. Let me stay with the Goddess of Nostalgia a little while longer.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown, MD. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.
Two collections of his essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”) are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is www.musingjamie.com.