A Tale of Two Summers

Last summer opened with a good bit of trepidation; in the midst of the pandemic, we brooded about not being able to travel far, worried about what was safe and what was not, and lamented the disruption of cherished summer traditions. As we approached this summer of 2021, conversely, things were looking up: the kids had made it through a strange school year, our family was fully vaccinated, and it felt like we’d return to a carefree summer of freewheeling fun.  

Now, as we enter these waning weeks of the summer (I know it’s only early August, but I always feel that whoosh of time flying when I turn the calendar from July to August), it seems that the tale of these two summers wasn’t quite what we expected it to be. This summer, it turns out, wasn’t better than last summer – or worse. It was just different.

Despite the pandemic – or maybe, in some strange way, because of it – our summer of 2020 was pretty great. Yes, it was weird to eschew cookouts and gatherings. We were bummed to not fit in a trip to Cape Cod with my folks, and even more disappointed to miss the usual visits from far-away cousins. We missed the spring soccer season that spills into summer. We missed family sessions of mini golf. We missed impromptu trips to – well, anywhere, really.

By necessity, we embraced local wonders more than ever. And one of the huge perks of the summer of 2020 was that all our local friends were here; nobody was traipsing off for a week at the beach, trips out west or abroad, or time away at summer camp. Instead, we’d gather by our favorite swimming holes late in the afternoons, the kids splashing around and jumping off rocks and downed trees, the moms soaking up the sun and catching up. We refurbished forgotten mountain bike trails in the woods by our house and created a couple new ones. We paddled around in kayaks, looking for turtles and sliding into the water to cool off.

And through the month of July, the kids and I hiked. Sometimes it was just the four of us on the trail, but often one group or another of our hiking friends joined us. From the first day of the month to the last, we crossed eight of the state’s 48 4,000-footers off our list. We even added a couple of overnights – my kids’ first ever backpacking adventures, and my first in a good long while.

This summer, though, we’ve hit the trail only a few times. I don’t know that we’ve had a single lazy afternoon by the river with friends. And the kayaks have been loaded into the truck and slipped into the water only one time so far.

The start to our summer was partly consumed by the tail end of a competitive spring soccer season of busy weekends. The two teenagers in the family started their first jobs in June, which made spontaneous hikes and river trips and anything else nearly impossible. The weather has been weird. And fitting in hiking trips or other outings with friends has proved difficult, with other teenagers working and other families taking vacations at different times.

Instead, this July opened – very happily so – with a visit from my California brother and his family and wrapped up with a visit from the Tennessee contingent. There was tons of cousin time, late nights of visiting and kids running around, and short visits from more extended family thrown into the mix. These cousin visits are among my children’s most cherished summertime traditions, made even sweeter this year by last year’s hiatus.

Another summer tradition returning this year: our pilgrimage to the sandy shores of Cape Cod and the beaches my brothers and I visited when we were kids. Summer may be fading faster than I’d like. But I’ll get my toes in the sand before it goes. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's August 5, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.

Maggie Meets the Sea

We took a spontaneous, whole-family trip to the Seacoast last weekend, piling all three McPhaul kids and both adults into the minivan – along with the dog. Only the cat was left behind, and since he doesn’t even like the short drive to the vet once a year, he seemed OK with staying home.

I am a planner. I like to know what the itinerary is before I head out on a journey. This natural tendency became more acute once I had kids and needed to plan for snacks and meals and bathroom breaks and all the other minutiae that come with traveling – even if just down the road – with small children. Now that the kids are older and relatively self-sufficient, I’m able to “wing it” a little more. But I still carry snacks and a first aid kit just about wherever we go.

My husband, at least when it comes to family time, is more likely to improvise. He’ll tell the kids to grab what they need for any potential adventure – sneakers and swim suits, towels and lunch – and jump in the truck. He’ll take a drive without a pre-determined destination. He’ll change the plan as he goes – or just head out without one. If we’re going away for more than an afternoon, I make a list and check off items as I pack well in advance. He throws a few things in a bag five minutes before we walk out the door.

We know each other’s tendencies – and that sometimes, often, they are in opposition to each other. Usually we make it work.

So, when he mentioned this idea of driving to Portsmouth for the day, with several potential things to do while we were there, I threw caution to the wind and said, “Let’s do it.” And then, of course, I packed enough snacks to last us at least three days.

Along with visiting a friend who lives on the Seacoast and watching the hometown high school soccer teams, who were playing all the way down there Saturday afternoon, we also wanted to take our dog, Maggie, to the beach.

Maggie turns two this week. We brought her home when she was a tiny bundle of golden fluff. She’d never been outside until the October day, just before Halloween, when we collected her from the Vermont farm where she was born. We placed her promptly on the grass. One sniff and she was smitten. She’s loved being outside ever since.

One of Maggie’s favorite outside places is in the water. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lake, a river, or a muddy drainage ditch along the road. If her fur is wet, she is happy (unless a bath is involved). But she’d never explored the salt water – a fact of living in the mountains rather than by the sea.

Always game for an adventure – whether a morning run, a family hike, or just a quick ride in the car – Mags eagerly loaded up Saturday morning. She stuck her head out the window as we drove down the road, wind in her face, ears flapping, eyes half-shut in ecstasy. She whined in anticipation as we drove through the Notch, hoping to get out and jump into a river or run along a trail.

She leaped from the car when we finally arrived at the ocean, picked her way down the rocks to the beach and bounded toward the water. Then stopped and retreated as gentle waves broke and moved up the sand. Rivers don’t do this, nor lakes.

Several times, Maggie trotted forward as the sea water retreated, then backpedaled clumsily as it rolled again onto the gray sand. Finally, she followed the kids as they waded in up to their knees. She chased the rocks we threw into the waves for her. Lapped at the water as she always does and shook her head in confusion at the briny taste.

She got used to the waves, then realized the ocean is filled with treasures. She started coming back to the beach with long, bushy strings of bright green seaweed clenched in her teeth, proud of her discovery in this odd-tasting, always moving water.

We humans stood and watched her antics, thoroughly entertained as we so often are by this goofy dog who chases butterfly shadows, begs for bits of broccoli, and is entirely obsessed with squirrels.

Then we carried on with our unplanned road trip, meandering along the shore before turning inland to the next thing and, eventually, north toward home. It was fun to explore, even briefly, a different part of the state. Back home, contentedly tired, we all agreed the best part of the day was watching Maggie meet the sea.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the September 14, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

A Tale of Two Seasons

On the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, rather than going for a hike or a bike ride or an end-of-summer trip to the beach, we settled into what felt like a fall day. That morning was one of a string of chilly mornings, and the day’s damp start turned into a steady rain by lunch time. I was tempted to nudge the thermostat up and kick the furnace into action for the first time since May, but it just seemed too early.

Some gifts of the changing seasons.

Instead, we lit a fire in the fireplace, letting the woodpecker-drilled logs of an old apple tree burn into fresh ashes on the hearth floor, swept clean months ago. We dug through the shorts and t-shirts of summer to find jeans and fleece tops and socks. And during the big weekly grocery shop, I put a roasting chicken into the cart rather than something to throw on the grill. For good measure, we added locally-grown apples to bake into a pie.

It’s a bittersweet transition, this shift from full summer to early fall. I lament the new darkness of early mornings and the relative freedom of summer days spent mostly with the kids, but I am also relieved to get back to a more predictable routine of work, school, soccer practice – busy as it is.

Probably it was that return to the school year schedule that meant the kids were happy enough to spend a rainy day inside Sunday. Although the hauling out and tidying up of bedrooms was met with a chorus of complaints, the rest of the day they were content to cozy up inside, read, play a few games. Not a bike was ridden, nor a ball kicked all day. There was no tree-climbing or swimming hole jumping or even digging in the sandbox.

It was a stay-at-home day unlike any we’ve had since the flip-flops came out – and are unlikely to see again until that brief window in November between the end of soccer season and the start of ski season.

That nestling in against the cool and gray of outside, the crackle of the fire and cinnamon-tinted scent of apples baking felt welcomingly cozy. Still, we were happy when Monday dawned suddenly summery again. Back we went to doors flung open to warmth and brightness, to running around barefoot in the grass, to savoring the waning light of summer. That night I pushed aside the extra blanket I’d added during the recent chilly nights and slept again with windows wide open, on sheets dried on the line and smelling of sunshine.

Despite the rainy week that has ensued, that brief return to summer amid autumnal weather was a reminder that we haven’t fully turned the corner into fall yet. We are on the transitionary cusp, with one foot loitering in summer, even as the other one is stepping toward fall.

Yes, the mornings and evenings are darker now, the leaves are making their undeniable transition from summer green to autumn red-orange-gold, and the vegetables remaining in the garden are of the hardier variety – beets and carrots and kale – but chances are we’ll have a few more days that feel like summer. Days where we can toss aside the sweaters and pull out the t-shirts again, turn faces to the sun, maybe dip still-tanned toes into the cool river. Days that seem like a gift from the passing season, even as we cozy up to the next one.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the September 8, 2017 issue of the Littleton Record.

Indecisive March

March is such an indecisive month. I think whoever coined the phrase, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute,” must have done so in March. What other month can bring near-summer temperatures, mid-winter snow squalls, rain storms, thunder claps, and sunny blue skies all in one week?

Snow crocus

Even after such a weird-weather winter, this month has been intensely unpredictable.

The crocuses bloomed last week, the earliest I can remember them opening to the warming sun. And our first robins of the year flew into the yard weeks before their normal arrival date. We’ve had more birds at the feeder than ever before: chickadees and blue jays, nuthatches and woodpeckers, goldfinches and purple finches.

I’m loath to bring the feeder in with so much color and activity there, but I’m sure by now the bears are about, and I’d rather keep them out of the sandbox, which is next to the bird feeder. My kids rediscovered that sandbox last week. It’s been there all winter with hardly a skim of ice, but suddenly, with warmer weather, it was the new hot spot.

Maybe the sandbox is just better in shorts and t-shirts. And that’s what the kids were wearing, casting off their more practical mid-March outfits and digging into the summer clothes as soon as they’d walked in the door from school and dropped their backpacks.

My littlest one even asked for bug spray. I’m not sure if the bugs were actually in the sandbox with her or the request was just an innate response to wearing shorts. Regardless, the kids spent hours in the sand, making some combination of mud-sand whoopee pies and cookies and cakes, digging tunnels, getting thoroughly, happily dirty. It’s the most peacefully the three of them have played – I don’t know, maybe ever. As soon as dinner was in their bellies, back out they went until the dark crept in, later now that we’ve changed the clocks.

The next day dawned sunny and warmish, moved to a sky clustered with thunderheads, and ended with cold and wet. And then it snowed. Back out came the extra layers for skiing over the weekend, the neck warmers and thick fleece shirts. Flip-flops, still covered in sand, were chucked once more into the depths of the closet and replaced again by snow boots.

Yes, we are in that familiar March place, where we might ski or bike or walk along the beach at Echo Lake. Maybe all three in one day. The extended forecast calls for a continued mixed bag of sunshine, rain, snow, warmth and chilliness, sometimes all in the same day.

So, I’ll hold off washing up and packing away the winter gear for a while longer, at least until mid-April. March is such an indecisive month. You never know what’s coming next, and it’s best to be prepared – for a little bit of everything.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 25, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Vacationland

For the past 17 years I have lived in places where other people vacation – a tiny town surrounded by tall peaks in Colorado, then a seashore village in the west of Ireland, and finally settled into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. For many years I did tourism-based work: waitressing, guiding horse treks, retail jobs in ski stores and gift shops. And like most anybody who lives in Vacationland, I have occasionally been frustrated by visitors who drive too slowly while looking at the view or ask questions bordering on the absurd (“At what elevation do the deer turn to elk?” is among my favorites).

It was a refreshing role reversal, then, to travel to another Vacationland last week, exchanging the quiet mountains of home for the sandy beaches, busy ice cream shops, and whimsical mini-golf courses of Cape Cod. Here, I became the rubbernecking, out-of-town driver, peering first to the landscape of the sea and salt marshes, then to the perfectly picturesque Cape houses with their neat cedar shingles and hydrangea hedges ranging in hue from pale pink to cornflower blue and deep purple.

On the Cape in summertime, it seems the tourists outnumber the locals, but it’s easy to pick out the houses where year-round residents live. There are nameplates on the doors, sprinklers set on timers to water small lawns in the wee hours, plastic-wrapped Cape Cod Times tossed onto driveways each morning, and neat fences containing backyards with patios and swing sets.

At our home in New Hampshire, surrounded by an untamed apple orchard and wild berry brambles, we are regularly visited by moose, deer, and bear – the wildlife tourists to the area often hope to see. The week before our Cape Cod vacation we had one bear, looking for some discarded cooking grease, spend a bit too much time a bit too close to the house. We’ve also had bear cubs in the sandbox and a juvenile moose in the perennial garden.

By these large animals, my children are unfazed. But the small, lightening quick eastern cottontails of Cape Cod were fascinating. We looked for – and often found – them everywhere: the mini golf course, the back yard, on the way to the beach, on evening walks through the neighborhood. Each glimpse of brown ears and fluffy white tail elicited gleeful exclamations of “Bunny!”

An even bigger treat was the seals we spotted in the waves off Monomoy Island, where we happily traveled with friends who have a boat. The seals seemed as curious about us as we were about them, their round, black heads staring at us from the shallow water before ducking into the ocean and popping up again a few waves over.

Wading through tide pools, the kids found hermit crabs, a starfish, huge snails, mermaid’s purses, rocks in all sizes and colors and rubbed smooth by the ocean, and more shells than would fit in their plastic buckets. These things may be as common to Cape Codders as bear and moose sightings are to us, but for my New Hampshire kids, the treasures of the sea are new and wonderful and will be remembered fondly until our next visit.

This was our third annual trek to Cape Cod, and it’s become a week my children look forward to all year. For them, it’s a chance to sleep in bunk beds, play in the waves, and go for a boat ride or two. For me it’s a cherished family tradition and happy change of pace. Salt water and sea breezes are good for the soul, in the same way that clear mountain air and vistas are, or paddling along a lake where loons sound their wild cry and sunlight glints off quiet water.

No matter where you find Vacationland, a change of scenery and break in routine can be refreshing, invigorating, recharging. I count myself lucky to live in a place where a breath of fresh air is available any time from the front porch, the windows frame a stellar mountain view each day, and you’re more likely to be delayed talking with a neighbor at the post office than stuck in a traffic jam.

Still, it’s nice, sometimes, to get out of town. It was a joy to spend a week at the beach. And it was a blessing to return to the mountains, a Vacationland for many, but simply home to me.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul and posted to her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the Aug. 9, 2013 edition of the Record-Littleton.

Summer's treasures

On the windowsill above our kitchen sink are a heart-shaped stone from the river and a small bouquet of wildflowers, both gathered by small hands not far from our front door. These are summer’s treasures, and gentle reminders – as I’m doing the dishes, making meals, or sorting mail – of the joyful, fleeting magic of both summer and childhood.

The rock came home from a recent visit to the Ham Branch of the Gale River, where my husband and children took the dog for a quick after-dinner dip and brief respite from last week’s heavy heat. No matter how many toys a child has, it seems the simplest things are the most amusing, and rocks are high on the list. This one, gray and bumpy and fist-sized, became a treasure because of its shape and my 4-year-old’s recent fascination with hearts.

Fresh wildflowers appear regularly in our home and change with the evolving season. The small vase that holds them, an old spice jar, is filled in spring with the bursting yellow of dandelions until the variety of summer blooms through the fields. Now we have yarrow and purple clover, birdsfoot trefoil, daisies, and wild black-eyed Susans.

My son noticed a swath of daisies in a part of the field we can’t see from the house while out mowing with my husband the other day. So, as the heat waned in the late afternoon, we all headed down the grassy path cut through the field to see the wildflowers. Along the way we discovered another of summer’s treasures – wild blueberries.

We have lived in this house for nine summers, and last year was the first we found blueberries. Now that we know they are there, we find the low bushes everywhere. We discovered this year’s first blueberries the same day we picked our first peas from the garden and ate them, sweet and small and warm, straight from the pods. Both the berries and the peas are little, and it takes a good bit of effort to gather just one bite. But, oh, what a bite it is!

On shelves throughout our home, there are treasures from other summers in other places – rocks etched with small fossils, found during a climb on Treasury Mountain near my former home in Crested Butte, Colorado; sparkling white chunks of quartz from an old mine near there; jars of seashells from Cape Cod; a bent mountain bike chain ring that recalls a fun and challenging ride; a small gray stone rubbed smooth by the ocean and picked up along a beach in the west of Ireland.

Winter’s treasures of rosy cheeks, crisp snow angels, and flying ski runs down a mountain are harder to hold inside a house, just as the colors of autumn fade too quickly, and spring’s emergent green grows soon into full-fledged summer. But summer’s treasures are collectible and happy reminders in colder, drearier days that the sun always shines eventually.

This summer is young still, and many of its treasures yet to be discovered, collected, enjoyed. But summer passes quickly in a splash of the pool or the river, a week at the beach, the sounds of laughter in the sunshine. Most of the blueberries in the field now are still green, offering the promise of many pints to pick in the weeks to come. The peas are among the garden’s first gift in this hot, wet summer, and we’re looking forward to harvesting other vegetables growing there, slowly it seems (and enjoying the farmers’ market in the meantime).

Some of the treasures we gather in this season will fade – the fresh lettuce, the clamor of birdsong in morning, the wildflowers in the jar, the sun-browned skin on our faces. Others will keep awhile. We’ll fill the freezer with the extra bounty from the garden and the field – plump blackberries, blanched green vegetables, and zippy basil pesto. A few more treasures will land on shelves and windowsills. In our hearts and memories we hold a bit of every season – fall’s color, winter’s invigorating chill, spring’s awakening, and the treasures of summer.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, published on her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the July 12, 2013 edition of the Record-Littleton.

Summer Vacation

Ahhhh, summer vacation. That time of year when school teachers everywhere breathe a sigh of relief, students run out the schoolroom door toward sun and fun, and parents rejoice in not having to rouse children and pack lunches in the wee hours of weekday mornings.

The lazy days of summer.

Except that, at least for us parents, summer is a mixed bag. Along with the happiness and sunshine comes a niggling sense of panic at the thought of having to entertain our children all day – or find someone else to do so. During the carefree (ha!) days of summer, we enjoy extra time with our kids, but any sense of a “normal” schedule is dashed as we squeeze summer into already busy days. It may not be all rest and relaxation, but if you do it right, summer is still a groovy change of pace.

It’s been many years since my school days and the associated laid-back time of summer break. Still, every year as June rolls around, I look forward to the down time of summer, even though now, summer often seems a blur of activity. I’m a stay-at-home parent, but also a work-from-home parent. Daily life during the school year involves juggling class field trips and cooking dinner while scheduling meetings with clients and time for work. That process is confounded during the weeks of summer, as we work in trips to the pool and the river, time with visiting family, gardening, and summer sports.

I’m a morning person by nature and, now, by necessity and am usually up and at ‘em by 5:30, to squeeze in a bit of work, a morning run, a load of laundry, maybe a little reading, and – if I’m lucky – one quiet cup of coffee. Alone.

With the early brightness of almost-summer mornings, it’s easier to get up and go, and I find myself working both earlier in the mornings and later in the evenings, as the daylight lingers. That frees up time during the day for all that summer fun!

With a warm spring that is heating up toward the solstice, we’ve already snuck in plenty of summer activities. We’ve visited two of our favorite swimming holes along the river, taken a couple of trips to the pool, and savored afternoon popsicles and dinners al fresco. The summery scents of sunscreen and bug spray and smoke from the grill already permeate the air.

Still to come… the beach, golf and tennis lessons, time with friends, a vacation near the ocean, scrambling up our favorite local hiking trails, parades, s’mores cooked in the fire pit, catching fireflies, canoeing, mini golf, and visits from the cousins who live where the real heat is – California and Tennessee.

Ahhhhh, summer; who has time for lazy days when there’s so much to do!

Cape Cod Memories

With the exception of the six months I spent living by the sea in the west of Ireland, I have always been a mountain girl. It took me to adulthood to realize (like so many other things) that I need to be within sight or, better yet, touch of tall mountains to maintain my emotional wellbeing. But that half a year I spent wandering the small, quiet beach in a small, quiet Connemara town, plus a week at the beach each summer of my childhood, have also inspired a love of and reverence for the ocean.

And so it was a joy to explore the beaches of my childhood with my own children last week, at the summer mecca that is Cape Cod.

Here, the beaches teem with sun seekers and sand lovers. The roads to the beach are many and filled with cars. Ice cream shops, pizza parlors and seafood restaurants, and stores hawking all nature of small colorful rafts and plastic knickknacks pop up regularly. Cedar shingled houses fill postage stamp lots everywhere. This is not the sea of the West of Ireland, with its beaches nearly empty of people, dolphins leaping through the dark water off the shore, and solitary fishermen rowing long curraghs out to check lobster pots – the idyllic and useful sea that tugs at my soul.

But on Cape Cod, amid all the hubbub, are the beaches of my childhood, when my family would spend a week at a friend’s house, walking down the sandy lane and ducking through a hedge of beach roses to reach the nearest swath of shore.

The return to the Cape, after a long absence and with my own children, was a replay of memories and the making of new ones, with new characters and changed roles. The parents of 30 years ago are now happy grandparents, holding on to the small hands of new swimmers. The carefree child of that time now the watchful mother, orchestrating lunch on the beach and sandcastle construction. The delight of children at the beach – skipping through waves, scooping handfuls of shells into bright buckets, chasing seagulls – is the same, though the faces have changed.

My children basked in a week of tiptoeing through seaweed and discovering hermit crabs and horseshoe crabs and sand crabs, returning to our cottage each afternoon with sand in their bathing suits and hair, the salty-thick air of the shore clinging to skin and filling noses. They played mini golf, nudging turquoise and yellow and fuchsia balls through tiny lighthouse doors and under windmills. They spit out the salt water of the sea when waves trespassed too far and savored the sweetness of ice cream at a place called Sundae School, my own childhood haunt. They took boat rides with old friends to quiet beaches that disappear when the tide rises and looked for lighthouses rising from rocky outcrops.

A Cape Cod friend gave my mother a card that reads “Once you get Cape Cod sand in your shoes, you will always return.” We have come home to our mountains, inadvertently and inevitably carrying Cape sand in our shoes, the car, our bags. Along with the sand, my children have carried home buckets of seashells from the seashore, picking up each newly discovered shell as if it is the most wonderful, most beautiful, most unique of all the millions gathered in long piles on the beach. I hope they also carry in their hearts good memories of the sea and all the joys of childhood summers at the ocean.