around Memorial Day, my business partner and I decided to change our work schedules. Instead of splitting each week down the middle—one of us working Monday and Tuesday and the other working Thursday and Friday with half days on Wednesdays—why not alternate weeks instead? One of us works one week, the other works the next. And so began my summer of endless vacation. Yes, I say this half complaining. I don't expect any sympathy, but one thing that's not easy to do when you have every other week off and a love for the beach is to write. And so here it is one week from Labor Day and I find myself without any summer blog entries longing for two things: a regular writing schedule and a new pair of kickass jeans. I really love jeans.
Vacation number one was to the Jersey shore in Seaside Park where my mother owns a small house on the bay side. It is important to add the "Park" onto the town of Seaside lest you think me low class and trashy and one of those girls that hung out at the POW-MIA stand on the boardwalk. Seaside Park is a town with large boxy houses built along a grassy-duned beach front and the houses have wraparound porches and worn cedar shakes. Seaside Heights is guidoville with Midway Steakhouse steak sandwiches the delicacy of choice and Yakety Yak the nightclub of choice. Or maybe it's not important to make the distinction. I have a deep affection for both.
That is to say, I am a Jersey girl at heart. When I was old enough to think about my clothes, I chose to wear white hi-top Reeboks and sweatpants twisted at the ankle. There were a few half-shirts in my wardrobe, some of them hand cut and beaded, and one Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt that came down to my knees with "RELAX!" printed in large block black letters across the front. My best friend Wendy teased her bangs straight up and sprayed them into place. The rest of her hair was carefully permed and this style lasted well into high school.
Wendy and I spent the school year walking Woodbridge Center mall with many trips past Freestyle, the skate shop, to get glimpses of the cute boys working there, and weekends walking around the cul-de-sac where Rob O'Shiro lived. (We changed the Prince song Oh Sheila to O'Shiro and sang it regularly when out of earshot of Rob's house.) We spent summers cruising the Seaside boardwalk, concentrating our laps around the POW-MIA stand, where burnouts and skaters alike congregated. This is all very Jersey. Also, my brother is a guido. He has a walk-in closet full of rayon shirts and slip on shoes and doesn't own one sweatshirt without the neck cut out.
So, when I arrived in Seaside in late June, it was like coming home. At the beach with me that week were my brother's kids, four of them, and my sister-in-law. This meant mornings were spent getting everyone dressed and ready to go to the beach, and another hour was spent feeding everyone before we went to the beach, another hour getting the kids, chairs, towels, buckets, snacks, et al to the beach, and the afternoon was spent convincing the youngest girls that they wanted to stay on the beach, which meant about an hour or less of time actually spent at the beach and maybe five minutes of that seated, and none of those minutes in a row.
At night, we went to the boardwalk to play Deal or No Deal (this season's latest craze) and Dance Dance Revolution (my personal favorite) and spend hundreds of dollars on games to win a stuffed snake with tie-dyed fur. We also played Skee-Ball and ate funnel cake. There's something about the salt in the air on the boardwalk that allows you to eat deep fried foods and waffles and ice cream with no caloric intake, another reason the boardwalk feels magical. We also played mini-golf at Barnacle Bill's. This was a very fun week.
It's been my not-so-secret ambition since I was a kid to spend summers at the Jersey shore with my children, or without my children. I think I could do this, I just need the husband who makes enough for me to spend the summer at the beach and the beach house. Let's call it a dream deferred.
Next stop... Shelter Island, an island off the Hamptons. To give this island fair shakes, keep this entry reasonably long, give myself something to write about next time and get home in time to watch the Mets game, I'm going to defer Shelter Island until the next entry.
Wish me luck on buying those jeans. Hip hip September!
