Beachward Bound

On Wednesday, Scott, Benjamin and I are hitting the road to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for our first beach vacation. This vacation could not come any sooner for me, but I suppose they never can. I'm excited to get out of town and just breathe in the ocean. I have been a ball of stress for what seems like months on end, and I hope this vacation does its job and serves as a tonic for that.

The best part is this is Benjamin's first trip to the beach. He loves what limited time he's spent in the water during his first 13 months of life, so I'm hoping he enjoys it. I think he will. Once he gets over how strange the sand feels on his toes, I think he'll love it. I'm also hoping that this is the first of a regular family vacation for us.

I've always relished my family's traditions, however large or small. Some of them have bitten the dust, like Thursday night pasta dinners. Thank you, Dr. Atkins, for that one. My parents started following your crazy diet and shunned carbs, and so Pasta Thursday became Chicken Thursday or Steak Thursday or some other Meat-Based Thursday. Um, not the same!

That one was especially hard for me to relinquish. My dad's family is Italian on his mother's side, and when he was growing up outside of New Haven, Connecticut, the whole family gathered at my great-grandparents' house for dinner on Thursdays, too. Imagine your stereotypical Italian grandma, and that was Nanny. Their entire house smelled like sausage and peppers, all the time, and the walls were covered with old photographs in ornate frames. My great-grandfather, whom everyone called Pop, ate sausage and peppers every day for lunch. He just barely made it to 100 years old when he died when I was in college. 

When my father decided to marry my mother and settle in Pennsylvania near her family, he wanted to carry on the tradition. We had dinner together every night when I was growing up, which, at the time, I thought was weird and inconvenient. So many of my other friends rarely ate with their parents, and they ate whatever and whenever they wanted. We were not permitted to answer the phone during dinner. We had to sit at the table until everyone was finished eating. My mom cooked, but we kids were in charge of setting the table, filling the water glasses (always water, and probably milk when we were little, but no juice or sodas allowed) and clearing the table and washing the dishes afterward.

For many years, we'd travel to Connecticut for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and every meal was a gluttonous, raucous affair. The table was always filled with what seemed like dozens of dishes, but the main event was the "conversation." I put this in quotation marks because there was never just one conversation going on at once. True to stereotypes, the Italians were loud, and you had to be loud and quick too if you wanted to get a word in edgewise. They could be counted on for at least one argument, often about politics. Someone would inevitably storm off at some point or raise up both hands in utter disgust. But there would also be a lot of laughter and a lot of telling of the familiar family legends that we'd heard so many times before.

I loved these dinners. I loved the excitement and the almost exoticness of them. There was not a significant Italian population in the small, rural Pennsylvania town where I grew up. Everyone, it seemed, was German. Hell, I was the only Catholic in my group of Methodist, Lutheran and Presbyterian friends.

We had a contingent of relatives from Hoboken and other parts of New Jersey whom we'd see twice a year: at the Jersey Shore in the summer, and at the Hoboken Italian Festival on the second Saturday in September. (Maybe more if someone died or got married.) My father still takes trips there a couple times a year just to get cannolis at Carlo's Bakery, which has recently been immortalized in reality television in the show "Cake Boss."

The annual beach trip lasted until just a few years ago. We went to Wildwood Crest for years, a less trashy town next to Wildwood. We'd go to the boardwalk at Wildwood a couple nights during the week for pizza and ice cream and souvenirs (pronounced "sil-venirs," if you're one of my Hoboken relatives). I marvelled at the big-haired Jersey girls as they sauntered down the boardwalk in their bikini tops and shark-tooth necklaces, their hands squarely planted in their boyfriends' back jeans pockets as they walked. I didn't mean to stare, but I know I did. I didn't look like those girls, and I was with my parents and little sister and brother. Tour-ist! Lame!

Then, when we all got older and even more weary of Wildwood, we started renting a house in Sea Isle City. It was close to the bridge into Avalon and Stone Harbor, which, if you've ever been there, you'll know is not a thing like Wildwood. It is upscale-quaint, scenic and clean. If Wildwood is Bon Jovi New Jersey, Avalon and Stone Harbor are Martha Stewart New Jersey.

We'd always drive to Cape May and spend one evening at Sunset Beach, watching, well, the sun set and hunting for Cape May "diamonds" in the sand. There was a flag-lowering ceremony every night, accompanied by the warbly strains of Kate Smith's "God Bless America" playing on a record player. The "MC" would announce that the ceremony was about to begin, and the needle gingerly lowering onto the record would crackle across the P.A. system. Everyone would stop talking or licking their ice cream cones for a few minutes and stand and watch the flag as it made its descent down the pole.

One year, eight years ago, my brother proposed to his then-girlfriend at Sunset Beach. My dad was the only one who knew Michael was going to do it, as he'd helped him pick out the engagement ring. Michael invited Michelle to take a walk along the beach, and my dad shooed us all back from the water onto a too-small beach blanket.

My boyfriend at the time had come along on the trip. Our relationship was on its last legs, and for whatever reason, he tagged along on a family vacation. We'd had an argument earlier that evening in the grocery store about spaghetti sauce, and as much as I knew the relationship was over and certainly needed to be, I wasn't ready to let it go. I was holding out hope that he'd come to his senses and try to make the relationship work when I really should have been praying for me to come to mine.

So all of us — my parents, my sister and her friend, my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend and I — watched from the beach blanket, mouths agape, as my brother dropped to his knee at the edge of the ocean at sunset and asked Michelle to marry him. My mother and sister and I squealed and started crying. We were too far away to hear what was going on, but we soon saw Michelle's hands flapping in excitement. We saw her nod "yes," and he stood up to kiss her. The entire beach had apparently been watching, too, because they clapped and cheered for them. Kate Smith started singing, the flag started dropping, and my soon-to-be-ex looked as white as the sand.

At Michael and Michelle's wedding, they had the DJ play a few bars of "God Bless America" as a silly homage to their engagement story. The guests looked around like there'd been some kind of mistake, and I love that only we got the joke.

As much as I'd like to take my husband and son to the Jersey Shore to experience what I experienced as a kid, I'm glad we're going to Rehoboth. I love Rehoboth. I'd give a limb to have a house in Rehoboth. And, truth be told, my aunts own a condo there, and you can't pass up free room and board.

Not only that, but I want Scott and Benjamin and I to make our own memories. New Jersey can have my childhood, but Delaware can have me now.

Back in the Saddle (So to Speak)

For the next few months, don't be surprised if most of my posts will be about food and cooking. Warm weather and fresh produce inspire me every year to get back into the kitchen after months of winter cooking doldrums.

This weekend, I stopped by one of my favorite farm stands to buy more strawberries for Benjamin, who is OBSESSED. Smart kid. I could eat strawberries right now like it's my job.

'Tis also the season for asparagus, and the market had some real beauties. I picked some up not really knowing what I'd do with them.

There's been some difficult stuff going on in my family during the past few weeks, and cooking provides a little bit of a respite. I feel guilty sometimes about doing mundane things (and then writing about them), but if I don't, I think I might go crazy. I try to remind myself that life is a series of Big Things and Little Things, and that it's not real life without both. Doing or thinking about one doesn't take away from the other. And so I cook, I take care of my son, I clean my house, I listen to music, I drink too much coffee, I shop more than I should, I write, I don't get enough sleep, and I worry about my family all at the same time. (Well, not all at the same time, but you get my drift.)

I came across a recipe for a frittata with asparagus and tomato in one of Giada De Laurentiis' cookbooks a little while ago, and I had all of the ingredients, so I gave it a whirl. Frittatas are awesome. They're basically thick omelets that you don't flip or disturb in any way, or quiches without crusts. You can put anything in a frittata.

It was easy: eggs, cream, butter, olive oil, salt, pepper, asparagus, tomato and provolone cheese. (The recipe called for fontina, but I didn't have that, so provolone it was.) You whisk together eggs, a bit of cream, salt and pepper, and then you cook the asparagus and tomato in the butter and olive oil. Pour the egg mixture on top of the veggies, add the cheese, and cook for a few minutes until the bottom is set but the top is still runny.

Pop the skillet (it needs to be ovenproof; I used our cast-iron one) under the broiler for a few minutes until it's cooked and the top is golden-brown. Pull it out, let it cool for a couple minutes (I used the time to whip up a quick salad of local lettuces and spinach), flip the frittata onto a plate, and slice it up. Perfect, easy, delicious dinner.

 

It's Official: I Have Turned Into My Mother

My mother is amazing. She is smart and kind and funny and direct and a very good cook. She's also quirky. All of her idiosyncrasies are too numbered to mention in one post, so I will just talk about one of them.

The following scenario is one I remember very clearly from my childhood, as it happened approximately once a week:

I'd be upstairs in my bedroom listening to my Bangles cassette tape or talking on the phone (or both). My brother would be tearing around the house or out in the yard throwing a baseball. My sister would undoubtedly be hanging around one of us asking to play, and we'd undoubtedly be telling her to leave us alone. (Sorry, Kate.) My dad was likely snoozing in the recliner with golf or a Western on TV. All of a sudden, we'd hear our mother screaming at the top of her lungs for us to all come to wherever she was IMMEDIATELY. Fearing she was hurt or in the process of being kidnapped or hoping she'd just uncovered a secret stash of diamonds hidden in a cabinet by our house's previous owners, we'd all come running to her as fast as we could.

And there she'd be, her eyes afire, her cheeks aflush, pointing out the window.

"Look!" she say. "It's a cardinal! See him in pine tree right there?"

That's right. A cardinal. We'd groan and say, "You made us come in here to look at a bird?" and we'd return to our Bangles and our baseball and our bugging. We were so unappreciative.

It wasn't always a cardinal. Sometimes it was a robin or a blue jay—or even a woodpecker or a hummingbird if we were really lucky. Heck, sometimes it wasn't even a bird at all but a spider or a praying mantis. But what it definitely was not was a secret stash of diamonds.

So today as I was driving home after dropping Benjamin off at daycare, I was stunned to come around a corner and see a bald eagle flying across the field right next to me. A BALD EAGLE!!!!! I've never seen one before in my life, even when I lived in Montana, and here was one, just a mile from my house on a random Tuesday morning.

I actually said, "Oh my God! It's a bald eagle!" out loud to myself while I was driving. I nearly drove off the road. And if I hadn't seen it fly out of sight, I probably would have pulled over, jumped out and tried to take a picture of it with my iPhone. I was disappointed that I was alone. Texting my husband and my mom at work to tell them what I saw just wasn't the same.

Now, I will give myself credit and say that seeing a bald eagle is certainly more extraordinary than seeing a boring old cardinal, as lovely a shade a red as the males are. But I also know myself well enough to know that when I see something cool, I want everyone to see it, too. Too bad for them if they can't appreciate how cool it actually is.

What can I say? I come by that trait honestly.

Prepositions

As a journalism professor, I spend a good deal of time thinking about and talking about what makes good writing. The definitions vary wildly, of course, but part of what we teach is that good writing is accurate, ethical and correct (among lots of other things).

Today in two of my classes, my students learned (at least I hope they did) the difference between "more than" and "over."

Quick grammar lesson: According to the AP stylebook, "over" refers to a spatial relationship and "more than" is preferable when talking about numbers or amounts. Think: The cow jumped over the moon. More than 50 people applied for the job. See? Easy.

I use the example of "The cow jumped over the moon" with my students because they've all heard the nursery rhyme and find it an easy memory tool. The cow moved from Point A to Point B.

On my drive home after work tonight, I thought about prepositions (I know, I know. Nerd alert!) — over, under, around, through — and I instantly remembered a feature story I wrote years ago. I was working for a regional magazine, and I was assigned a story about a weekend camp for children who'd suffered the loss of a loved one, such as a parent or a sibling. A photographer and I camped with the kids for the weekend, and I wrote the story about how this camp was helping these children heal. It was a heartbreaking weekend — and a heartbreaking story to write.

One afternoon, the kids learned the song "Going on a Bear Hunt." It's a chant, and the leader sings a line and the kids repeat it. During the "hunt," the kids face a tall tree, a wide river, a deep, dark cave and other obstacles. But, as the song says, they can't go over it, they can't go under it, they gotta go through it.

It would be a good song to teach kids about verbs and prepositions, but that wasn't the point. The point, as the leader told them after the song, is that grief is much like a bear hunt: You can't go over it, you can't go under it, you have to go through it and trust you'll come out OK on the other side.

And, in the true spirit of how my brain works, it went from my classes today to prepositions to the bear-hunt song to the camp to grief to my niece before it finally settled on my son, as all of my thoughts seem to do now. I suppose that's another "side effect" of giving birth — all roads lead to your children.

The end of February leading into early March has been, for the past couple of years, a bittersweet time for my family. Two years ago, my infant niece, Mileva, died when she was 17 days old. One year (and a few weeks) later, her sister, Maia, was born. Maia will be turning 1 this weekend. In two months, my son will also turn 1. And in July, Maia will have a new little sister.

I could never pretend to fathom the pain my brother and sister-in-law have endured during the past two years. There has been a good deal of that, all of us in my family coming at it from different angles. Now that I have a child of my own, the thought of ever losing him literally makes me feel sick and panicky for a few minutes.

I don't know what the hardest part for me was — the death of my niece and never getting the opportunity to know her, or watching my little brother and his wife (whom I think of as much of a sister as my own biological sister) in sheer anguish and being absolutely helpless to do anything about it, or seeing my parents unravel and fray with so much sadness.

But regardless of the outcome, even when things looked promising and we all thought she would make it, I knew it was a Big Moment for my family — a game-changing, life-altering, make-or-break moment. For me, when some Big Moments have happened in my life, I didn't realize it until they were actually happening or maybe even after the moment had passed. We've all had Big Moments in our lives—first loves, first heartbreaks, moving away from home, starting our first real job, getting married, having a baby, even moments that seemed to be Small but turned out to be Big.

But this was different. I saw this Big Moment approaching for months. This was a time that I knew would shape us into something new and different, would forever change the fabric of our family and our very outlook on the world around us. And that scared me.

My family has always been close. My parents have been married for almost 38 years. My friends joke that we're like the Cleavers or the Bradys. I know better, but I can see how an outside observer might think so. I knew who we were — I'd always known who we were, and that helped me understand who I was. If we weren't who we always had been, then who would we be?

And like the bear hunt song says, I knew we couldn't go over the grief or under it — we had to face it, go through it, feel it, let it own us for a while, and hope that we'd come out in one piece in some semblance of ourselves on the other side.

I remember having a long talk with my brother in the weeks after Mileva's death. We work at the same university, and he'd often come to my office (it's a real office, with a door that closes and locks) in the middle of the day when he felt like he was going to lose it and didn't want to do so in front of his colleagues or his boss. He'd sit in the chair, and he'd cry and I'd cry, and we'd talk. Well, he'd talk. I hardly ever had anything at all to say except "I'm sorry" over and over and over again. All I could do was wish and pray and hope the pain away for him, even though I knew that's not how it works. You have to go through it.

The thing about hope that I never thought about before: It's inextricably tied with fear. We hope things happen the way we want them to because we fear failure, disappointment, pain, loss. We fear the unknown. But we need hope—really, what would we be without it? And the thing about grief that I never knew is that you survive it, you get through it, but you never get over it.