Captain’s Log: Day One

The Babyman is as good a traveler as anyone else in my family.

Which is to say, HE TOTALLY SUCKS AT IT.

This morning at 8:37 we left Rochester for our perch here on an 80-foot sand dune near the edge of the eastern United States. The Babyman commenced crying at 8:39 and continued uninterrupted for NEARLY FOUR HUNDRED MILES.

No amount of snack food or milk would soothe the beast, and as we sent Mr. C home Friday, I drove solo with The Poo and her brother. Poor little Poo, I lost my temper with her when The Babyman finally nodded off for the second time.

He fell asleep after our first pit stop, only to be woken after five minutes when my mother decided she needed to pull over and pee just 29 miles (yes, I counted) after her previous potty break. When she came out of the rest stop holding a giant Diet Coke I nearly killed myself.

About 20 minutes after Aborted Nap Attempt No. 2, The Poo decided she needed to tell me something RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW AND IN HER LOUDEST VOICE after being told three times to whisper.

I lost my temper.

About 15 miles after I lost my temper, I pulled over to our third rest stop, went to the bathroom by myself while my mom sat in my van, and cried in the stall while a woman next to me had a enormously stinky bowel movement.

We made it here, but of course my son, whose new nickname is Home Stretch, slept from 5 p.m. until we arrived at 6:45, making bedtime about as enjoyable as you’d imagine.

I see your eyes rolling back in your head. I know! I know! Why do I do this? To myself? To my children?

Good question.

Tonight I feel like a guest. We haven’t been here in two years; The Poo’s cousins arrived before us and laid claim to the two beds that have night tables. Her stuff is all over the floor, theirs is neatly stacked on their tables. There are diapers in my closet, diapers that The Poo wore the last time we were here. There is a hat sized for a two-year-old on my dresser.

My sister moves around the kitchen with confidence and a sense of ownership I don’t feel. I can’t find the soap or the washcloths. I am timid about using the washer and dryer.

And yet, I was the one who came up here when the house was just a shell, eight weeks after my father died. I was the one who walked the framed rooms and put my hands on the timbers: Outlet here, phone jack there, I instructed.

I was the one who stood in a shop for six hours with my mother, and helped choose the small, glittering glass diamonds that link the larger blue slate tiles. I was seven months pregnant, heavy with child and grief.

Maybe that’s why I do it. Because I was here when it was nothing but bones, this house by the sea. When it was just glimmering of what it would be. Maybe because I remember my father, gaunt and exhausted, rolling and unrolling the blueprints and hanging on to them, literally, for his life.

He lived just long enough to see them break ground.

So I come, again and again, despite the hurt feelings and the sense of being on the outside now that I’ve moved to Chambana.

I come, because I want my children to understand tradition, and legacy. Because this house built on a hill of sand is theirs, too.

I wish I felt more like it was still mine.