This Is 30 Years: Just the Two of Us for a Beach Day

In Maui on our 1991 honeymoon, I chose two souvenirs: Chic golden sandals from a fancy hotel boutique and a miniature glittery, golden pineapple from a plantation for the linked charm bracelet Dan gave me for Valentine’s Day, three days before our wedding. Today, at our 30th anniversary dinner in the time of Covid, we purchased the waterproof foldable guide above from the restaurant gift shop as our memory touchstone. That, and our delicious seafood meal (a splurge, counting appetizers and tip) will be enough. Nature is a big part of the joy and marveling Dan and I share.

Can’t believe it’s 30 years since we got married (Sunday, February 17, 1991).

We’ve been wanting to get away overnight, but it didn’t work out with the pandemic, frequent snow and high Airbnb prices....and life....so we drove to the beach today...to Sandy Hook. It’s just a one-hour car ride.

Want to get to sleep....THAT’S what #30 is like...trying to go to bed at the same time, with our books.

So a BULLET LIST of goodness today:

• Our sandwiches from home, wrapped in tin foil.
• No entry fee (off-season).
• The lighthouse at Sandy Hook, built in 1764, amazing. Longest running lighthouse in the United States. Soaring, sturdy tower, red and white. Lamp, originally fueled by whale oil, now electrified.
• A mom with her little girl (age 2 or 3) and the girl’s pink tricycle.
• The older kids with their moms....I plan to take Punch/Skippy and a friend back there one day soon. It’s a living classroom, water lapping to shore.
• Signs of World War I and World War II U.S. Army occupation and officers’ life, right in the cove of Sandy Hook. The “Officers’ Row” houses were built around 1798. So sturdy, still standing. How many storms have they withstood? We saw ammunition (torpedo shapes?), lookouts/fortresses over the water, the old Officers’ Club and the chapel, which was used by the whole base.
• Deer, hawks, sunshine, bird nests, old trees, bike trail, people out walking.
• Dinner at Bahrs in Highlands, New Jersey (“Famous for Seafood Since 1917”). We didn’t plan to eat inside; have not done so during the pandemic. But the manager let us sit in an area off by itself, still with a pretty water view.
• Dan’s Wellfleet Oysters, my crabmeat-stuffed flounder. Warm biscuits. Beet salad. Cloth napkins. Small, silver-tone coffeepot on table.
• Our second honeymoon souvenir: Tidepools of the North Atlantic folding pocket guide. I love this guide series and have Shells of the New England Coast on the kitchen counter, to remind me of Cape Cod, where I bought it, and help transport me there in my mind. This evening in the gift shop, it was tidepools, owls or common bees. I think I made the best choice.
• THE OCEAN. But too cold and windy to sit on the beach. I dragged my chair on with Dan, sat a couple minutes, quickly retreated to car with him.
• THE TRIGGERED BEACH MEMORY of little, walking Figgy (age 2?) in her aqua terrycloth Gap dress; she did not want to step on the sand. The beach must have seemed so foreign to her, like another land. Shaky underfoot, not dependable or known. Dan had to carry her over to our beach blanket. “She was so timid,” he said with a smile today. “I love her so much."
• BEACH MEMORY of Asbury Park with Fig and Punchy. The memory of that, about seven years ago, took on a new spin in my eyes now. Her context for past life melding with new life.
• NEW YORK CITY on the horizon. Striking, remarkable.
• TALKING ABOUT LIFE AND AFTERLIFE AND PHILOSOPHY on the car ride home.

Above, the guide I keep on the kitchen counter: https://www.foldingguides.com/product/shells-and-beach-life-of-the-new-england-coast/

Good night, sleep well.