Down South By Way Of Rhode Island

         I am not in the habit of revealing promises, but this particular promise was so lovely and so fully realized that I think it has to be talked about. At the beginning of summer proper, I whined – quite incessantly and on a daily basis – that I needed beach time. I meant that I wanted several days of essentially living on the beach from dawn until dusk. We had gone on some lovely beach outings, and I enjoyed them, but I needed more.

                  Before our yearly journey to North Carolina, my husband insisted on leaving a day early. I thought he meant to visit some friends along the way.  But instead, he took me to a beautiful beach near Watch Hill in Rhode Island.  We spent the better part of the afternoon and into the evening there, body-surfing, taking long walks, reading, napping, and then swimming in clear, fresh salt water again. The light got long and golden, reflecting the calming waves in the sea and shining against the lighthouse. For me, a good beach trip requires all this and a little more: I like to find sand in my ears, I like the tiny hairs on my body to be encrusted with salt. I like my hair, which is straight, to be thick with salt and humidity, curling in the heat and resisting attempts to tame it. And on that day, we had beach time. It was a promise fulfilled lovingly, the very best kind in my opinion. We made our way to a fish shack, the sort that seem to be everywhere in New England (and nowhere in North Carolina) for a short season of fried fish and lobster rolls. In the winter they become almost invisible, lacking any traces of their summer life. I had a sandwich that a major men’s magazine, the kind that tells men what suit they must buy for next season and articles of men who had survived horrible encounters with nature, has listed as One Of The Best Sandwiches In America. I quite enjoyed the sandwich: fried cod with lettuce and tomato. Christian had local flounder served up fried. He liked it, but it was not listed as One Of The Best Things In America.

                  The next day held our travel from Connecticut to North Carolina. We had thought and planned a route that we felt would be speedy. It started off that way. We had breakfast at O’Rourke’s Diner in Middletown. To say that this is my husband’s favorite restaurant in the world does not get close to explaining it. He has been eating there for twenty years, charting the progress of Brian, the owner, from simply the proprietor and diner cook to a world-class chef. You can still eat eggs and bacon there, but you can also get zucchini buckwheat pancakes and lobster fritatta. Brian gets lots of his cooks from the down-and-out in Middletown, and there are plenty of them, but he has a way – a touch, if you will – that can straighten people out and help them get their lives in order. It’s something of a life-changing place. So to start the day with a meal there was good fortune. Christian called the lobster fritatta and chicken hash the best meal of his life. My zucchini pancakes were amazing, but I don’t think I can assign superlatives just yet.

                  As we started driving I began to worry about my husband. His meal had struck him speechless and he spent a good while staring out the window. The cord that connects the car stereo to his ipod began its final death throes. I was thinking about how to fix the situation and was not being a good driver. I do maintain, though, that it is hard to be a good driver when navigating places you have never driven. I always chose either the lane that was about to end or exit-only lane and panicked at splits in the highway. Someone should have filmed me to show a driver’s education class what not to do when behind the wheel. However, we remained intact from there to here so even my bad driving was good enough to avoid a wreck.

                  Things came to a head in Bethel, Connecticut. The cord quit just as we hit our first traffic jam of the day. Since my car appears to feast on ipod cords, and since neither of us can drive without an ipod, we pulled off the road and went to Target. We found a new cord immediately and walked enough to stretch our legs. When we left the store there was a small girl singing the syllables “pu – na – ni!” at the top of her lungs. It made me laugh but Christian didn’t hear it.

                  We spent the rest of the fourteen-hour journey rotating between tunes, talkies and reading “Country of the Pointed Firs” by Sarah Orne Jewett to each other. I desperately want to be able to switch between a number of accents: Southern, Down-East Maine and a New York Jewish Grandmother. I can currently do no accents and this bothers me deeply. I feel that it hampers my reading.

                  By the time we rolled into Raleigh around 1 am, we were too tired to be tired. But we are here and there are visits and decisions to be made. The heat of the day is starting to descend around us and the only correct thing to do is hide from it and hope that it does not find you.