My grandmother has a strange fixation on the beach.<\/p>\n
Today is gorgeous in Charm City. Generally clear, save for large puffy clouds. It was on the chilly side in the morning — mid-forties — but by lunchtime the temperature had climbed into the high-fifties, low-sixties, and there was a brisk wind behind it.<\/p>\n
In short, a day for kiteflying. Not a day for the beach.<\/p>\n
Consider, then, my conversation with my grandmother over morning coffee:<\/p>\n
Grandmother:<\/b> It’s so pretty today. Everyone’s going to be going to the beach.<\/p>\n
Me:<\/b> Today? No one’s going to the beach today.<\/p>\n
Grandmother:<\/b> They will. They always do. The beaches will be packed.<\/p>\n
Me:<\/b> It’s the middle of the week. It’s April. The ocean is cold. Children are in school. Adults are working. No one’s going to the beach today.<\/p>\n
Grandmother:<\/b> They don’t have to go in the ocean.<\/p>\n
Me:<\/b> Kids aren’t skipping school to go to the beach. Adults aren’t playing hooky from work. People aren’t going to the beach today.<\/p>\n
Grandmother:<\/b> Yes, they will. Yes, they will.<\/p>\n
Me:<\/b> Right. People are going to skip school and work on a random day in mid-April to drive hours to get to the beach to look at water that’s far too cold to go into.<\/p>\n
Grandmother:<\/b> They will.<\/p>\n
I could only shake my head.<\/p>\n
Baltimore, despite being on the Chesapeake Bay, isn’t anywhere near a beach. Our neighbors, despite whatever my grandmother may think, aren’t skipping work today for a beach outing. Kids aren’t skipping school to go for an ocean swim.<\/p>\n
This is typical.<\/p>\n
Any<\/i> morning where the sun is out and the skies are suitably blue, my grandmother is insistent about how the whole of the area will be taking off for a day at the beach. There can be snow on the ground, and my grandmother will talk about the neighbors going on beach outings.<\/p>\n
Her interest in the beach is mystifying to me. My grandfather’s relatives typically go to the beach every year, yet I cannot think of any time where my grandmother went on any sort of beach outing.<\/p>\n
She has memories of beach outings all the same, and she will tell anecdotes about weeks we spent at the beach when I was young. Or how she goes to the beach on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
One particularly vivid story she told was about how she threw me into the ocean when I was three or four off the end of a pier. I can tell you that no such dunking in the ocean off the end of pier was experienced by me in my childhood.<\/p>\n
She seems to think that we live near the ocean.<\/p>\n
She also thinks that my siblings live near the ocean.<\/p>\n
My parents took my grandmother to visit my brother and sister for Easter. “They live at the ocean, don’t they?” she said to me.<\/p>\n
I shook my head. “No, they live near the mountains,” I replied sadly.<\/p>\n
“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “I forgot that you can see the mountains from the beach.”<\/p>\n
She was referring to Virginia Beach, where my sister went to school. You can’t see the mountains from Virginia Beach; they’re a hard four hour drive west. (It’s something Down Periscope<\/i> gets wrong, given that it was filmed around San Diego; the Norfolk Navy Yard isn’t anywhere near mountains.)<\/p>\n
At dinner it’s likely that she’ll notice cars on the road, heading west, and she’ll wonder aloud if it’s people returning from the day at the beach.<\/p>\n
Or, she may notice there are<\/i> no cars heading west, and she’ll wonder if people are staying overnight at the beach.<\/p>\n
That people aren’t descending on the beach as she believes they are simply doesn’t register.<\/p>\n
I wonder what the fascination is with her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My grandmother has a strange fixation on the beach. Today is gorgeous in Charm City. Generally clear, save for large puffy clouds. It was on the chilly side in the morning — mid-forties — but by lunchtime the temperature had climbed into the high-fifties, low-sixties, and there was a brisk wind behind it. In short,Continue reading “On My Grandmother and the Beach”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[159,4093],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-grandmother","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}