Until Next Year

We’re home now, back in our house on the prairie.

All we have left of Cape Cod are the shells we collected, hard and ridged oysters stacked atop smooth, striated clams. The same shells that posed such a threat to wee, tender toes are now lonesome reminders of a summer spent by the sea.

Our vacation was not all ice cream and lollygagging afternoons on the sand. There was conflict, emotions as heavy and roiling as the hurricane now threatening that slender peninsula so dear to my heart—to all of our hearts.

This morning, The Poo came down the stairs—thump, thud—her pink nightgown almost to her shins. When we set out on our trip halfway across the country in early July, that same princess-bedecked nightshirt fell softly to her ankles.

“Mom,” she said, her voice still throaty with night. “Mom, I dreamed about Cape Cod.”

Her eyes were barely open; I could see the slender, swaying pine trees behind her lids. “Mom,” she said. “I dreamed we were on Cape Cod and we had to go shopping, and I said, ‘Why do we always have to go shopping!’”

She threw herself on the couch, her calves still brown from the sun.

***

It isn’t easy to be away from home with two small children. Maintaining some sense of order in your own environment is hard enough, and trying to do so in an unfamiliar space is maddening.

During the three weeks we spent at the shore, The Babyman went from formula to milk, from baby food to table food, from barely walking to running and climbing. He was keenly aware that we were away from our familiar places.

He cried every single time we got in the car.

He woke up at every noise, and he shared a room with three other children. He screamed in the middle of the night, something he hadn’t done in more than six months.

Meanwhile, his sister was an emotional sponge, soaking up all of my anxiety and the surge of feelings from everyone around her. She played so hard that her eyes closed while she was still kissing me good night. She spent a great deal of time away from me, running hard with her cousins, trying to keep up with their primary-school pace with a preschool battery pack.

It wasn’t easy.

***

We drove down Route 6, heading west this time. I grabbed my iPhone and snapped a blurry photograph of Cape Cod Canal as we crossed the Sagamore Bridge, its graceful span marred by the sign advising anyone thinking of suicide to contact the Good Samaritans.

I wasn’t expecting the tears. I was ready to go home, exhausted from packing and unpacking, from strange beds and climbing 40-foot sand dunes with 25 pounds of baby in my arms. Ready to trade sand for concrete and school days.

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the Cape. I never have been, not since I was 8 years old, crossing that bridge for the very first time. Not since my dad rented a cottage from his co-worker. Not since the day I walked to Thumpertown Beach with my Walkman headphones hanging around my neck.

***

Our days are slowly taking on the shape of fall.

The Poo is in school five days a week, 9 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. The Babyman and I find our own rhythm: breakfast time, play time, cuddle time, nap time. He blossoms under the sun of my full attention, and I discover the boy who is my son. His uncharted topography slowly comes into focus.

Every morning I pack The Poo a lunch and hand her a pink backpack with her name on it. She shrugs it over her shoulders and turns to me, face tilted up.

“Hugandakiss,” she says, all one word, like a mantra. I lean down—not as far as I used to—and kiss the top of her head.

Some mornings, I can smell salt and sunscreen in her dark-brown curls.