Summer's End

There are few things as sad as empty rooms in a summerhouse on a gorgeous August day.   For the past week our rental has been full of people, but this morning, we are but two, bumping around each other for the last few days.  There should be sand to sweep out of the house and the smell of the grill, nightly excursions to the ice cream parlor in town, and my quintessential summer treat, fried clams.

What makes me hesitate to write my annual Ode to Summer is that I’ve been tres reflective this vacation, even though we’ve managed to stave off the predicted thunderstorms that were supposed to hit last week, and no one got into a teary brawl as can sometimes happens with Forced Family Fun, a term my friend Robin coined when we were teenagers. 

We are at the end of our two weeks in Wellfleet, Mass; one town over from Truro, oddly called “the Lower Cape” even though it’s due north of its elbow.  Truro was where we spent our family vacations in a true seasonal two story on Highland Avenue, the second floor bedrooms separated by tongue and groove paneling that never made it to the ceiling, allowing for children and parents alike to hear everything and tease each other, call out "Goodnights" and laugh at dad’s snoring before dropping off to sleep.  Those days in Truro were some of the best parts of my childhood, influencing me in ways I am still discovering. Respect for the ocean and its treasures - a piece of sea glass to join a colorful collection on a kitchen window shelf back home, a perfect angel wing shell, driftwood aged by salt water, a game of gin rummy ending in rousing hysterics, the acknowledgement of summer and the change of seasons.  Learning these simple pleasures.

We’ve traveled to P-Town no less than three times, boiled eight lobsters and a dozen ears of corn, supped on pints of chowder, went for long walks on the cove.  My sister, younger brother and I try to recreate the best parts of those Cape summers from our youth, but we just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to see “Smurfs” at the Wellfleet Drive-In, a patch of tar worthy of some of my favorite memories. 

We’ve spent our days together at any one of the five beaches. I’ve been studying for my GREs, trying to remember my high school math and cursing periodically when an algebraic equation eludes me. I ask about Quantitative Reasoning and am answered by blank stares.  Indeed. I would have the same reaction. I admire the New Yorkers who brave coming to the Cape, Land of the Red Sox.  When we were kids, and cars were the size of small watercraft, we’d mimic our parents when the orange and blue license plates would crawl up and down Route 6a… “There go the New Yorkers…”. Even though I live and am registered to vote there, I still consider myself a New England gal.  While we are at Marconi, tide high, a couple of my city companions complain about the water quality – “It’s like swimming in a bunch of diarrhea” and “ It’s cheaper than a seaweed wrap at the Canyon Ranch Spa.   I haven’t showered in three days, I’m going to have to check out that outdoor thing”.  My sister and I look at each other but don’t say anything.  We don’t go into the water though. The moment for jumping the waves has been lost.

I’ve been plucking away as best I can on my guitar with Phil, finishing old crossword puzzles or catching up on “Mad Men” with my sister until I’m truly tired and ready the hit the bed, around 10:30 PM.   When you’re older and the kids that your siblings had are now in their early 20s, raring to go explore the local bars with the friends they’ve invited, it makes you reminisce about the energy you no longer possess. Time speeds by so quickly, you’re trying to reel it back in like an 8-pound striped bass on the end of your line. 

On the late afternoon of the 14th, Siobhan and I head to Duck Beach to witness the extreme low tide.  Once a month the ocean stretches its arms back towards England; a phenomenon brought on the by the full moon. We laugh in wonder at how incredibility gorgeous the sky can be. Pepper cannot find any birds to chase as he did in Davis Park, and the plovers are just too miniscule and busy to attract his attention but he is happy to race up and down the beach and we are happy to chase him.  Clammers and families and lovers have toted their chairs and umbrellas way out away from the pebbly beaches to enjoy the quiet lap of waves rolling on the sand bars, a sound quite different from the roar of the ocean side.

Mom and I have walked through the house making sure that the beds have been stripped and tossing everything into the wash.   We are leaving the day after tomorrow.  The house is empty save for the remains of distractions we brought with us, my guitar, board games, and back issues of New Yorkers.  We are in the midst of a Scrabble-off. This morning Pepper & I braved it alone at Calhoon Hallow beach, but the sand finally drove us away. The wind is starting to pick up, advance warning of Hurricane Irene, but most of the vacationers welcome the balmy temperatures after the past two nights.

With dramatic weather comes dramatic sunsets, and I have been trying to keep the tradition my mother started all of those years ago in Truro when she and Pat Hall would call out “SUNSET” and drive off to Head of the Meadow beach.  It was important to say goodbye to the day.  I don my yellow mustard colored Cape Cod hooded sweatshirt, reminiscent of high school and head out into the 70-degree chill. It smells like fall and this reminds me why I love the East Coast so much. The shores of Wellfleet are truly magnificent; they are shores you can dream on for miles.  

The Longest Move

It seems like yesterday I was hailing a cab on 2nd Avenue, headed off to the tropical part of the United States, a/k/a: Hawaii. It was December 20th, 4:30 AM. It was cold and dark.  Street vendors piled the sidewalk with Christmas trees, and it was still so on January 17th, 2011.  The fragrant evergreen piney smell of trees that had been felled recently, and I imagine, bought on December 24th only to be tossed to the street as the 12th day of Christmas rang through. 

This was the day I had finally ordered the movers to deliver my worldly possessions to the apartment I had reluctantly signed a lease for in mid-December, immediately regretting the decision and spending the following weeks tossing and turning, dreams of unruly neighbors and angry landlords, who I had recently learned, were my next-door neighbors.

As if I had been born under a sign that demanded it so, it rained as it had for the past three major moves I’d been through, and for over $1000, three men busted my furniture and boxes through the door in just two hours. Not bad.   After they left the apartment, I followed them and traipsed back up to the safety of Tudor City and a minimalist apartment that wasn’t wall-to-wall boxes and plastic wrapped furniture.   

My friend and former roommate  Victoria offered some comfort, ‘moving always sucks’. “Remember how many books I had when we were living together on East 19^th Street?” I ask her. “Multiply that by 17 years.”     I ended up staying in Tudor City for the next two weeks until I was curtly told via text message "Cut the cord!”.  I was being ridiculous, I know, but I just did not want to face the task ahead of me. 

How can I put the feelings I had into words while I shuffled through cartons I had boxed up in August 2007 and left in a Pasadena storage facility?  "Simultaneously detached and eerily present" is what comes to mind.  In fact, it was rather overwhelming.  Life has happened.  Things have changed. I’m different. And that I’ve been an unapologetic transient… it feels like I’ve been moving for years.


I keep trying to believe what people tell me, that this will be fresh start, that all of my efforts and energy will come back to me, but I can’t seem to drink the Kool-Aid just yet. It seems like such a monumental effort, this moving, and I can't help but wistfully think of Gandhi and his shoebox.

What I’m finding are things particularly California-centric; a Stickley bed set, Catalina forged decorative tiles, Plein Art oils of the Cambria coast, a rare pattern of Franciscan ware called “Forget Me Not “ as if lulling me back to the west coast. 

All of this fit pretty nicely into that life over there - wide-open space and suburban cityscape, that way out west across the Painted Desert, the blur of colored lights in the middle of nowhere, the cragged ragged crags of the Sierras changing color with every hour of every day.   This is what my boxes contain. The light.   I miss the light, which is especially poignant given we’ve barely had two days of sun during all of February, March and the first two weeks of April.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in New York.  Every day I’m on the move, walking to and from and sometimes nowhere and I am always glad to be here. But I although the reason why I ended up here is a happy accident, I can’t say that moving is happy making.

It just brings up too many questions that wake me out of a restless sleep, overwhelming me at unseemly hours like 3:AM.   Questions that range from morbid, (“Do I really need these photos albums? Someone is just going to throw them out when I die”) to angry (“Why is the square footage constantly wrong on the apartment listings? This apartment is definitely NOT 350 SF.  Note to self – in NYC, always deduct at least 100 sf from what the listing states!), to despair masking as existential (“What am I doing here?”) This can be interpreted on both levels of spiritual to practical to a sack full of self-doubt. I mean, really, what am I doing here in this dark, studio apartment?   “Where do I belong?” Hawaii? Could I live there? I’ve always wanted to live in Spain. Why did I sign this lease?”)

Over the next six weeks, I slowly find a place for everything, come up with creative shelving, hunt down Crate & Barrel bargains on Craig’s List and make several trips to IKEA in Paramus, Elizabeth and Red Hook. 

After four years, I finally I have all my things in one place, with the exception of my Peter Beard signed print that is stowed in someone’s garage in Los Angeles.  For the first time in many years, I don't feel like my life is one big diaspora.


I'm further downsized and compact, and this apartment, which I refer to as The Garden, is really super cute.  My landlord is actually a very nice man, (although his wife tends to light into him every other day).  The Yankees fan across the hall is a complete stoner, so much so that there are times when I arrive home and MY apartment smells like pot. The light in my bathroom is yet to be fixed, but as Victoria reminds me, "Kat, this is New York - we've been waiting for our landlord to fix a lamp in our apartment for eight years!". 

And truly, I was tremendously happy to see those books, covered in plastic acid-free wrappers, a weekend project I’m grateful for as I see how badly the movers have handled everything despite my careful labeling.  I remembered all of my friends, gleefully recalling where and when I had found certain prizes while I examine the spines and page through to my favorite passages.


As I was lying awake one night, with those eternal questions zipping through my brain, this one popped in “Am I to be toting around these heavy boxes of books and curios all my days, items consolidated over time constituting my life? They are so heavy!”  I considered selling them.  It was Gandhi and that little box, whom I admired so much more as I shuffled these boxes from one end of the room to the other, but a friend advised that one day I would find that house and I’d want my books around me then. 


And so … even though the trips to yet a new storage unit, this one in Brooklyn, are bewildering, I know there is another move in my future.

For now, I'm waiting for the sun to come out and enjoying the lovely little space I've created.