We just got home from a ten-day visit to the south. There’s no doubt about it– it’s a whole different region down there. We drove from here (Cleveland) down through West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and landed on the coast of South Carolina on this wonderful little barrier island called Pawleys (no apostrophe). There we sat on the beach, looked for shells, rearranged large amounts of sand, and, when a bell rang to alert us to feedin’ time, went inside to eat mass quantities of delicious low-country cooking. This coincided perfectly for me with the end of my first-trimester nausea and illness, and the beginning of cravings and ravenous hunger. And need I say it was wonderful to NOT cook it myself? Nor shop for it? Nor do the dishes? Nor even decide what it would be? The freedom to dine barefoot was another plus.
Some highlights:
1) On the way down at some point in maybe a Carolina, we stopped for gas and a potty break (Isaac is the supreme champion of the potty now). Ben took Isaac into the men’s room, only to encounter a local man with his own son, about Isaac’s age. Unfortunately, the man and his son had just been out huntin’ possum or something MANLY like that. They were clad in hiking boots and maybe even a touch of cammo. Furthermore, Isaac, by contrast, was wearing a pink striped shirt, shorty overalls, and pink sandals. This gave Ben some sort of ineffable sense of .. I couldn’t really figure out what… but something like emasculation. He was able to describe it to me only in wordless body language, try as I might to probe the true nature of the feeling. “It was just…” [slumping shoulders, mouth agape, arms limp] he explained. I said, “Was it… like you were jealous?” [Head shake] “Unmanned?” I offered. “Embarrassed? P-whipped? Angry at me for letting him dress like that?” (Isaac had chosen his ensemble.) No… “It was just … like..” he trailed off again, then restarted. “Like there that guy was with HIS son, and there I was with Isaac, and… really it was the SHORTY OVERALLS that took it over the top…” I persisted, “But, I mean, what was IT? Shame? Regret? Inadequacy as a father in teaching your son about the ways of men?” My inquiries got really nowhere, as Ben just couldn’t possibly explain it. The shorty overalls recurred as the real crux of whatever it was. As if he had managed to bear the pink striped shirt and even the pink Tevas stoically, but those little overalls were just… beyond… beyond endurance. (I have to say, though, that over the course of the week we did encounter a certain genre of Southern gentleman who DOES wear pink shirts, and wear them with a lot of style.)
2) Isaac had a keen sense of female beauty on the beach, and whether chatting up attractive five-year-olds or glossy bikini-clad co-eds, he was very gregarious on the sand. At one point he was across the way talking to a very lovely young woman, perhaps a beauty contestant as she had that sort of slightly plasticy tan-with-long-golden-hair sort of beauty. He talked to her for quite a while, gesturing emphatically and apparently making one of his impassioned speeches. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. When he came back to the umbrella where I was stationed, I asked, “What were you talking about with her?” He said with a shrug, declining further elaboration, “Lizards and guns.”
3) In the library at the Inn (seaviewinn.com) they had this David Macauley book about “How Things Work.” Clearly this is a book for Isaac, although it’s really very much over his head in the way it’s written. It often frustrated him because he couldn’t understand it, but he still wanted to read it all the time. The part that he became fixated on was the part in which the process of making paper was described. We read it many times. Then one afternoon we were sitting on the dock behind the inn, out in this salt marsh, catching blue crabs with a piece of chicken on a string. We would catch a crab and let it walk around on the dock for a while, then let it fall (or we would push it) back into the water. Strictly catch and release, just for fun. Well, as one crab was sitting there on the dock, Isaac took a moment to explain to it, in great detail, how paper is made. “Crab? Crabby?” he said to get its attention. “First you cut down all the trees. Then you chew off the bark. Then you chop it all up and make it into stuff that looks like grits….” And so on. The crab seemed to be taking this all in, although its facial expression was pretty hard to read. Honestly, it was one of those exquisitely surreal moments that I just wish I had on tape. Ben and I sat there smiling at each other and both thinking, He’s really explaining to this crab how you make paper. …
4) On the way down I told Isaac that I had a baby in my tummy. This was because he had a way of jumping on me when I was unprepared, and also it just seemed best for some reason. In the car and all week we had lots of time to process it. He seems happy about it, although unshakable in his conviction that it’s a girl. He started calling the baby “Sappy,” which then grew into Sappy Lappy. Then I misspoke and called the baby “Sassy Lassy.” (I think I got confused because the lady running our inn was literally called Sassy.) So now it’s Sassy Lassy all the time, and we refer to her (?) like that. I can say, “Sassy needs a drink,” or “Sassy needs me to rest for a few minutes,” and this seems to not only convey to Isaac exactly what I need him to know, but also to simply DELIGHT him. At any mention of Sassy he beams. He’s very excited about being a big brother and went around the dining room telling people at random, “My mother has a baby in her tummy!” (um, thanks…) He also started in on the next natural line of thinking… how did the baby GET in your tummy? I’ve read in Penelope Leach that when you’re asked a question like that, you should just strictly answer that question and then wait for the next one. Don’t prattle on. I said simply, “Daddy put it there.” And Isaac just said, “Oh,” and went on with his day. But of course, after a while, he wondered exactly how did Daddy do that? With an airplane? But he hasn’t pressed the matter at all… yet. I will of course explain it as simply and frankly as possible when I need to. But not before. (The baby seems to be doing well, 19 weeks now. Lots of kicking and also a noticeable acceleration of growth…. is it a bad sign that I already feel inclined to waddle?)
5) For beach reading I read “Wake Up, Sir!” by my former schoolmate and casual acquaintance Jonathan Ames. He’s hilarious. If you want a light and very funny something to read this summer, please pick it up. The 2-page description of meeting Dr. Hibben at this very fancy (insane) writing colony is worth the price of the hardcover. I can’t repeat it all here, of course, but I can tell you that it begins, “He was a seven-footer, if you can imagine a pear that big.” Also, as someone says on the jacket blurb “a great gift for anyone considering getting a manservant.” If you’re a fan of P.G. Wodehouse, you will especially enjoy it. After that I sobered up with the new Michael Pollan book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which is all about our national food/eating system. (My new mantra is EAT LOCAL.) I also highly recommend it, although in some ways it’s sort of a current Upton Sinclair. You won’t look at corn-fed beef or chicken mcnuggets (32 ingredients, many of which come from Big Corn) the same way again.
Photos are available, as well as short films of Isaac doing “hat moves” (summersaults) on the sand, for those with high-speed connections. Drop me a note if you want to see ’em.