Cape May, New Jersey
[My 50th blog post!]
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| View of Cape May along Beach Avenue |
After six nights of Outer Banks camping, bookended by single night stays (in Charlotte, North Carolina with cousins Lynn & Jim and in Aberdeen, Maryland at my step-dad Ed's and Georgette's house), Erin and I were heading next to
Cape May, New Jersey, which is on the southernmost tip of land, a tiny finger, that juts down into the Delaware Bay on the west and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. I have a bit of history with Cape May. My mom and step-dad had a vacation place here for several years, my younger brother Jeff was married here and, since this was a place that was near and dear to my mother's heart, we spread her ashes in the Atlantic Ocean on Poverty Beach, one of her favorite shelling haunts. I myself also lived in New Jersey (just across the Delaware from Philly) for a few years when I was in high school. I was nervous about what Erin would think about Cape May and, since I hadn't been here myself in two decades, concerned that maybe Cape May was just a fond memory of mine from the past. Thankfully, Cape May is still the quaint seaside vacation town I remember and Erin has fallen under it's spell. Yes -- Erin has become an honorary Jersey Girl. She loves it! And we've both bought about a dozen items -- t-shirts, car decals, coffee mugs -- that say "Cape May" on them.
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| Sunset over the cabanas on the shore |
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| The "Painted Ladies" along Beach Avenue |
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| Beach Avenue in the morning |
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| The Inn of Cape May |
Erin and I decided to pop for a few nights in a hotel. We're considering it a belated 13th Anniversary celebration, which we never got around to celebrating in August. After almost a week of camping, we felt we needed a break (this is only our 3rd and 4th nights of hotel stays for the last 4 months). So we found a nice place called the Beach Shack down on the south side of Beach Avenue and have hunkered down for some tourist-type sightseeing.
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| The Beach Shack |
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| The view from our room |
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| Erin reading poolside |
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| Your humble blogger posing from the pool |
We also visited
Poverty -- or Poor Man's -- Beach to pay our respects to my mom. Visiting the beach where we spread my mom's ashes over twenty years ago was the first thing I thought of when we talked about an eastern leg of our 5-month sojourn. I often feel a connection to my mother anyway, but here on her beloved beach I felt an especially strong connection.
I love you mom.
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| Mary Jane's Beach, Cape May, NJ |
Wow, those houses look amazing!
ReplyDeleteSo interesting that you were on the beach thinking about your mom. That's what I was doing myself yesterday. I went over to Yachats for a couple days. Not specifically to remember mom but she always comes to mind when I see the ocean. She loved going there and the last trip we took together about a month before she died was to the beach. I have this clear memory of her and Chuck (stepdad) sitting hand in hand on a log looking out at the ocean. She had this bright yellow jacket on that she loved and ear muffs. We knew at the time that she had an aneurism that could burst without warning so I consciously tried to burn that image of her and Chuck into my brain. We keep what we can. Here's to moms - ya gotta love em.
Amen, Mona. Ya gotta love your mama! Without her -- your creator -- you don't exist. Our flesh is our mothers and our souls too. It's a lot of what my book is about: our complicated and incredibly unique relation with our mothers. Amen.
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