TouchedByMadness

Travelogue - 4 July 2008 (part II)

Now that it’s hot, lots of people begin showing up on the beach. Mostly we see families. The bay is more child-friendly than the ocean. Most people stay a good distance away from our blanket. I wonder if they think we’re honeymooners. I am glad they give us space.

I secretly watch the families. One man walks along the water’s edge carrying a toddler. I doubt she’s much more than a year old. She wears a skirted swimsuit and white sandals. He wears red swim trunks and a brown baseball cap. He puts her down so she can feel the sand and water. He kneels in front of her, talking to her as she experiences the beach, perhaps for the first time. She stumbles and he scoops her up. He continues his parade down the sand. He is the proudest father on the beach. I can feel it even from where I sit. I guess this is his first baby. I look for the rest of his family, but if there are more, I never see them. The man hoists the child onto his shoulder and slowly disappears from view.

Another father sets up his blanket not far to the right of us. He and his two boys take off down the beach. A few moments later a woman approaches the blanket, a small boy in tow. She looks around and starts yelling at the man.

“John? John. John! John, come here so I don’t have to shout across the beach!”

He dutifully returns, followed by the older boys.

“Why did you park our stuff here? She instructed me to be right by the parking lot. They always park near the lot. We were supposed to be by the lot.”

They are not far from the lot and the beach isn’t that crowded. He may be pointing this out, but we can’t hear him. Only her.

“The whole reason we came was to be with them, wasn’t it? Isn’t that why we’re here? They’ll NEVER find us over here. We were supposed to be near the parking lot. She told me to be near the lot. Why can’t you follow directions?”

He wordlessly begins to pack up their stuff to move it.

“No, leave it. Leave it! We’ll just pretend we came here to be alone. I said LEAVE IT! Why aren’t you listening? Leave it. We’ll sit here because Daddy can’t follow directions. We’ll sit here and they’ll sit over there. We’ll stay here so Daddy knows he’s a screw up.”

I press my face to the Captain’s stomach so she won’t see me laughing. The Captain is snickering too.

“One day that could be us,” I whisper.

“I know,” he chuckles.

“Where’s the sunscreen? Oh God, you left it in the car, didn’t you? The car? Now I’ll have to walk a mile to get it because we’re so far from the parking lot.”

We go in the water to escape the noise of her nagging. When we return their blanket is about fifteen feet further away from us.

Travelogue - 4 July 2008

We arrive at the beach early. It’s cool for swimming, but comfortable for sitting and relaxing. We walk across the sand, away from the parking lot. Very few people are out. The Captain worries that he’s read the tide chart wrong, and for a moment I think he’ll want to go to the ocean side instead. I assure him we’ll be fine and help him set out our blanket.

I take off my sandals and walk in the soft, hot sand. I let my feet sink into it. I love the way it feels. I wish aloud that I had a jar so I could take some Cape Cod sand home with me. (I have to settle for the sand that creeps into my shoes, towel, and beach bag.)

I walk from the soft, loose mounds of sand onto the hard, packed sand. Then I walk on the wet sandbars, amazed at how the same sand can produce so many different sensations.

We picnic on the beach.

The sky is overcast, but the sun fights to break through the clouds. The air is dry, comfortable and warm. I alternate between reading a book and exploring the beach for treasures for Little Sister. It isn’t hard for me to think with the mind of a nine-year-old. In a short while I’ve assembled a collection of seashells, spiky seeds, crab claws, sea glass, a pine cone, and a small dead crab. I carefully dust the sand off each item and place it in the disposable tupperware the Captain had packed my lunch in.

The sun comes out, which makes it HOT. The Captain plays in the water, but gets lonely quickly and returns to our blanket. I walk along the water’s edge, flirting with the waves. When they finally wash over my feet, I complain the water is too cold and run back to read on the sand. Eventually the Captain coaxes me into the water, but I’ll wade in only up to my thighs. I worry about stepping on crabs. I can just touch the surface of the bay with my fingertips, and trail them back and forth as I let the waves push and pull at me, rocking my body.

There are too many sights, sounds, smells, and textures for me to experience. Nothing can keep my attention. I frequently pause from reading to snuggle the Captain, or to sink my toes into the sand, or to make a line of reeds poking up along the edge of our blanket. The Captain laughs at my fortress. He says he should have bought me a plastic shovel and pail so I could make sand castles. I laugh too, although secretly I think it sounds like a fine idea.

Travelogue - 3 July 2008

The drive from our little cottage home in Connecticut to the house in Cape Cod takes between three to four hours. My excitement is palpable, wafting off of me as I chatter and fidget, unable to keep quiet or still.

The road trip unlocks distant memories. I recall a brown, clunky tape player and listening to books on tape - Mary Poppins and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I remember how we followed along with the audio recording, turning each colorful page at the sound of the beep. My mother gave us juice to drink - blue, red, orange, or purple sugary liquid in little plastic bottles that resembled mini barrels or grenades. They had foil tops that weren’t reclosable, so we had to make sure we didn’t waste them.

How many of us children were there then? Two? Three? I wonder if we were in my father’s blue Datsun with the vinyl seats my thighs stuck to in the summer heat.

I share all this with the Captain, then ask if we can visit a real tourist trap place on the Cape where I’ll be likely to find a sand castle. When I was a child I received a tiny blue sand castle as a gift. I was amazed by the small sculpture and handled it until it began to disintegrate.

I am certain Little Sister needs just such a trinket, even though she is guaranteed to destroy it in less than a week. The Captain promises we’ll look for one. I cross and uncross my legs a few times more as I internally squeal with delight.

Every so often I ask what state we’re in, afraid I’ll miss the transitions from Connecticut to Rhode Island and from Rhode Island to Massachusetts. The Captain bears this with great patience, even when I demand to know why Rhode Island is named such when it’s clearly not an island at all.

He fails to produce a satisfactory answer.*

Which prompts more questions.

The Captain does not seem excessively bothered by this, although I’m fairly sure he now has a taste of what it is like to travel with children. I suspect his tolerance may be a sign that he is just as excited.

This is our first vacation in two years.

---

* According to Wikipedia, Rhode Island, officially named the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is called Rhode Island in common usage, but most of the state lies on the North American mainland. Providence Plantations refers to the mainland, while Rhode Island is actually the official name for Aquidneck Island (now composed of the city of Newport, and the towns of Middletown and Portsmouth).

The Captain is aware that RI is officially named the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, but didn’t know that “Providence Plantations” refers to the non-island part we were driving through.

Nips

So, about the gym.

The great thing about the gym is that I’m slowly getting in shape. The bad thing is I’ve been regularly traumatized by a series of awkward events. Yes, I have learned to cope with naked people, but only because they’ve stopped talking to me and none of them have turned out to be coworkers (so far).

Now that I’ve overcome my fear of public nudity (other people’s - you won’t catch me prancing bare-assed through the locker room), I thought it would be pretty smooth sailing. And for the most part it has been, until later this week.

The last couple visits I made, the gym was way more crowded than usual. As I’m not patient enough to wait around for equipment, I trotted up to the women’s only floor (which is typically pretty empty). I hate the women’s floor for one reason: The cardio equipment is directly across from a wall of mirrors. This bothers me because what few women do go upstairs are always on these machines, meaning I get a full twenty minutes of mentally comparing my body against theirs.

I know, I know. But I can’t help it! It’s that or watch Everybody Loves Raymond. Which is really the greater evil?

I’ve discovered that most of the women who choose to exercise near me are quite skinny. Like, half of their body weight is really their tapeworm skinny. I can count all of their ribs and most of their other bones skinny. At first I thought they come to the gym to bulk up, until I realized they spend the entire afternoon on the ellipticals.

I don’t want to be eating disorder thin, so I’m not spending my time wishing I look anything like them. Which is good. Unfortunately, next to these skeleton people my not-so-unfit frame makes me look like Old MacDonald’s prize cow. Which is bad.

It also led me to my most recent traumatic realization.

I was surreptitiously glaring at the bony woman on a nearby elliptical for making me feel like train-wreck body Brittany when I tried to cheer myself up by noting, “Well, I have ginormous boobs compared to her.” That’s when I noticed that the girls were bouncing. A lot. As I paused to ponder why my sports bra was failing me so miserably I came to realization number two.

“Gym member Stacey Willets, your headlights are on.”

Holy highbeams, Batman! What the hell?

My mind reeled. When had those attention-whores declared independence? Have they been greeting my trainer each time we’ve met? Do my male coworkers acknowledge me in the weights room because they’ve been getting the twin peaks salute?

Did you know there are not a lot of exercises that require you to keep your arms crossed over your chest?

So if anyone knows where I can find a Wii Fit cheap, please do tell. At the rate I’m going, I won’t be able to show my face at the gym by July.

Nekkid

I’m a painfully shy person, so it’s not unexpected that the gym locker room is a place of high anxiety for me. After exactly two days I discovered that not everyone shares my opinion on public nudity.

I was changing back into my work clothes when a woman appeared from the showers wearing a towel . . . on her head. The rest of her was air drying, I assume. It gave me a little shock as she was the first naked person I had ever encountered in a non-intimate setting (which coincidentally isn’t many more people).

This is where the Captain interjects, “Stacey, it’s a locker room. That’s pretty typical for a locker room.”

Yes, I understand it’s a locker room. Which is why after my initial surprise I realized that seeing naked people was something I’d have to become accustomed to.

But then the naked woman started talking to me.

Ok, you know what? I don’t care if prancing about bare-assed is completely acceptable in a locker room setting, it’s freaken weird when a naked stranger starts chatting you up. I mean, there I am wondering where to look. If I look away, will she think I’m offended by her cellulite? Will my averted eyes damage her self-esteem? So I try to be polite and make eye contact, but she’s moving around and then bends over and really, that I don’t need to see.

She continues chattering a mile a minute, blissfully unaware that I’m probably scarred for life, while I’m trying to act all natural like I’d totally join this woman’s nudist commune except I’m easily chilled or something. At this point I begin to consider the absurdity of it all. I don’t even know this woman’s name, yet I can tell you that she keeps things well-groomed and probably doesn’t color her hair unless she’s just covering grays.

This is typical? Really? Knowing the state of a stranger’s bikini line and possibly being able to identify her colon in a line up?

Typical? Perhaps. Awkward? Absolutely.

So, excuse me, naked woman at the gym? Call it one of my many neuroses, but while I’m glad you’re comfortable with your body, I’m not.

No offense.

  

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