Love at First Sight

I was just reading this post that I wrote last August. Every single word still rings true seven months later-except the title. I am in love with Cape Cod and when things don’t feel good wherever I am, I think about the Cape. I can’t help it. I was going to write about the fact that I just opened a bottle of wine from our party and how it doesn’t really taste so good; I don’t know why I’m drinking it. My frozen pizza is pretty good though… hmmm, something seems off… So I went to my old post for some comforting thoughts when I started thinking about how many people have had dysfunctional parents and therefore, troubled childhoods. It makes me so sad every time I hear anything about any child suffering in any way. I have no idea how I went from frozen pizza to abused children and before your mind gets a hold of you, don’t worry I’m not going there. I can’t. Instead I thought I would take this opportunity to work on a writing piece that I have going now; although I’m not sure where it’s going, if only to my parents.

My parents have been married for like 46, 47, 48 years. I’m not sure at this very moment because I refuse to get up and check. They met each other, in my belief, due to fate and the universe at work. Ever since I heard the story I like to pretend it’s my own personal fairy tale come true. I feel so very fortunate to not only share it with others because of the warmth it brings to them but more so because I am a product of it. I share so much of my parents strength and love it’s sometimes overwhelmingly eerie. They met each other on the beaches of Cape Cod. I’ve always said the Cape is very powerful, there’s something going on there that is a force only the ocean and whatever is in that breeze can control. My parent got swept up in that force, fell in love and let the Cape take hold. And I’m ever so thankful they did.

They met in 1958 in true Frankie and Annette fashion: on the beach in the summer, with their friends and their blankets. My dad was down there building a house with his family when my mom’s sister was visiting on the same road. One day my mom’s sister was walking to the beach and she passed the house my dad was working on when he and his brother happened to be hanging out…looking out the window. The hammers and nails were dropped, bathing suits put on and they immediately went down to the beach to find out who the blond bomb shell was. I guess words were exchanged, but I’m a little unclear about the details. Every time I ask my parents for a re-enactment they can’t seem to remember so clearly. Oh well. The point is that the next day my future aunt got on the phone to her sister and told her she needed to come down to the Cape because there were two “good-looking” guys new to the neighborhood and one of them she just had to meet. So my mom did just that: scheduled a vacation, hopped the train from New York City and met her sister on the beach. She also met you know who… my dad. They immediately hit it off, spend the entire day on the beach and made a date for later that night. Three dates later they were engaged... I know. My dad popped the question on their fourth date at the movie theatre; my mom says she knew it was going to happen, she just felt it. The funny thing is that my dad was actually dating someone pretty seriously at the time, but a soon as he set eyes on my mom his world totally became all her. He pitched the old girlfriend the next day and spent four days basking in love, lust and the ocean air on Cape Cod with my mom! Their third date was at a really cool bar called the Woodshed, and strangely enough I hung out there when I was growing up and it still stands strong today.

Their story amazes me because it is about my own parents but the fact that they fell in love while on Cape Cod is even more special. I know why I love the Cape, I have history there and I believe part of my soul remains there which is why I feel so much more at peace when I can bask in the aura of it. I got to spend every summer as a kid at my grandmother’s house, the one my dad was building and now my parents live year round across the street from that very home. The day we sold my grandmother’s house I remember crying. I wasn’t really sure why, I just didn’t want to let it go. Over the years I learned that it wasn’t the actual house I didn’t want to let go of it was the connection I had with my parents, the cape and our family dynamics. I miss being a little kid on Cape Cod in the summer, but I love being an adult on Cape Cod. Five more months…