What I Learned on my Summer Vacation

(Programming Note: The Husband Formerly Known as That Man and also The Stud will hence forth be referred to as The Kid. His agents pressed me hard over a period of one week to enact the name change and since they were the ones filling the coolers -- and carrying them -- I will oblige. And frankly, any man who gives himself a nickname, admits that he has done so and also that he refers to himself by said nickname when engaged in inner conversations -- as in "The Kid scores again!" or "The Kid just stubbed his toe!" -- deserves the obligatory gesture of choosing his own literary anonymity.)

Anyhoo: onward.

Turns out the homestead was pretty much all ship-shape when we returned (breaking in through the gateway to hell cellar no less, as it seems I have no door key). CarolynOnline and NashsMom did a swell job cleaning up the joint -- must have taken the bottles with them -- and all was as it should be: a tad musty and covered in mail but the serious good news was the six pounds of hamburger meat that I thought I might have left behind ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER in 90 DEGREE HEAT was nowhere to be found. (It is stressful enough to buy food to feed 20 people for a week; it is way more stressful to realize you have lost 6 pounds of cow flesh that may or may not be breeding maggots in your kitchen.) (I am still wondering if perhaps we left the flesh on the bumper, leaving a trail of bloody rotten hamburger in our wake.) (Bygones.)

After tending to jellyfish stings, dodging a six-foot hooded seal in the surf, negotiating a bumpy beach road in a car filled with hyper kids with a wicked hangover, counting ten children's heads every sixteen to eighteen minutes to make sure none were missing/eaten/drowned, making approximately 20 to 25 sandwiches a day, re-learning to live with being wet, sandy, and nearly dread locked most of the time, and considering a good abdominal burn from a great laugh to be exercise, I can officially report that I am very pleased not to be Mrs. Duggar on a deserted island but that also, I already miss Chappaquiddick.

But I'm back yo. Like it or not.

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My friend expounded on his theory of relativity more than once. Maybe it was the sunsets or the booze or the fact that he is probably wikkid smaht, but it wasn't long before I was down with his philosophy, which is saying a lot really, as he and me are pretty much the Bickerson's of Party Town.

He'd been wondering why the summer (or even days) seemed so long as a kid, and why and how it is that the summer (or days or years for that matter) speed up as we age. Big ass question no doubt asked by millions of middle-aged drunkards, but I liked his theory: a child's brain is open all the time to new ideas, sights, thoughts, facts, jokes, food, feelings but the older a kid gets, the less challenged he becomes by what might be considered "new." So the brain starts speeding past things already considered learned and lo and freaking behold, the day is gone. The summer over. The year spent.

And this made sense really. The days seemed long to me when I had a new baby and maybe not for the reason I thought (boredom) and they seem long now when I'm up to me elbows in dirt in the garden (a new-ish obsession) or when I am tinkering on the Internet and trying to teach myself code and shit (I can barely set an alarm clock) or reading blog posts written by strangers in strange places about all kinds of random minutiae and heartbreak and hilarity (makes me all David Byrne-ish: how did I get here? is this my lovely wife? is this my beautiful house?).

I spent some of my precious time away walking around the acreage of the incredible house we rent with my fancy phone as if it were some kind of divining rod, except I wasn't fishing for water but wifi hot spots. I realize that seems so very not zen or relaxy but it turns out, I dig this whole weird bloggy experience and I dig what other people bother to write and maybe also I dig the way it makes my day seem longer. Longer in a good way. So maybe Mr. Bickerson is right. (Score one for Mr. B.)

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The Kid hauled his laptop out there and we dragged us and the kids one morning across the tiny ferry to the local library (hollla Ben Franklin) so I could connect for reals. He hooked it up and split with the Three Short Drunk People for a solid 90 minutes so I could troll and lurk and read and write. Seemed decadent. Made me adore The Kid.

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R got clingy on day four. "You've been out every night!" she said. I'd been out one night, I reminded her.

But I never get to seeeeee you, she purred. You've seen me the better part of every day you've been awake, I said, and I've seen you too.

Where have you seen me? she said. Um, I said: swimming, playing, digging, eating, scratching your bug-bitten legs to a bloody pulp.

You saw all that? she said. Yep, I said.

Then why haven't I seen YOU? she said. Dunno, said I.

I think sometimes I forget you're there, she said. Yep, I said, I think so.

She scootched in for a cuddle and said, that's weird Mom.

Not really, I said: not so much.

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On a beach one late afternoon, when the ten kids were sent home with the beloved (by all) babysitters, my BFFs told me I should start selling my home management systems. They snorted beer out their noses envisioning Home Management System One consisting of baggies and a Sharpie, Home Management System Two consisting of envelopes, a Sharpie and an elastic hair tie, and the Deluxe Home Management System consisting of a drawer with both hair ties, baggies, envelopes, a Sharpie and bottle opener for when the home management gets to be too, too much.

I considered it seriously. I cracked another beer. I thought, who needs a bottle opener? I have never been much of an entrepreneur.

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I stayed up late with the babysitters on our last night. They taught me that youth is not wasted on the young after all: they deserve their beauty and passion. They helped me edit some ancient fiction and we tried to post it on a flimsy connection, which I guess we did, but it's way, way down there. If you like youthful follies, you can check it out here.

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It's been raining forty days and forty nights since I've been home. Since I've been home for almost 24 hours, I suspect you get that I am using some hyperbole. But it rains. I like it. It might have soaked us at the grocery store but it also brought us to the Small Town video store. And now the house is silent but for the rain and the distant buzz of their movie and the clicking of the keyboard.

I missed you.