As usual, we never wanted to come home from Martha's Vineyard. We are cosmically lucky to have Seth's parents, and their most wonderful house on that storied New England isle. Last night, I put my finger on why we never want to leave. Because it isn't a hotel room, or a rental house, and we aren't guests. The Martha's Vineyard house is like home, but even better. We know every bedroom, which way you have to open the windows to get the best breeze, the oddities of each dresser drawer, shower, the washing machine, the kitchen. We know where the extra Diet Pepsi and the cases of wine reside. We don't really have to cook if we don't want to. Or clean up. But we do anyhow. Because Seth's parents do so, so much for us, and especially for the Olive.
Honestly, if we could, we'd abandon our life and house here in a second to live there. That, of course, is not reality. But it's how much we love it, our temporary life and home on that island.
This place is kid heaven. There's a real playground, with ladders and slides and swings, still scarily tall for our little girl, but she stretches her tiny legs to climb up anyhow, bouncing down the slide, crashing on the layers of pine needles that provide the cushion. There's a play house, just the Olive's size. It has a beeping cordless phone, bags of play food and play dishes to cook on the play stove. The windows and doors open and close. The doorbell rings. The basement is full of more toys. Any time anyone went down there, the girl had to go too, dragging something new out every time: a Tickle Me Elmo, blocks, a wagon, some still-creepy talking Teletubby dolls. There were also giant pads of paper, boxes of crayons, a dog to pet, huge wooden decks to run on, a swath of lawn. And more. Walks down to the boat dock to look for birds and crabs, boat rides to the beach, chasing balls on the tennis court, opening and closing the gazebo door a hundred times. Car rides to another beach, to a farm, to a town playground, a fishing town.
We discovered that the Olive loves the beach. LOVES. IT. Dug in the sand for hours, splashed in the sandy shallows, at the small gentle tidal pond beaches just a stone's throw from the house. Begged to be thrown and dragged and tossed into the briny warm waves over and over and over again, until she was almost too tired to stand. She didn't care about water in her face, didn't care about falling down, she just wanted to splash and wade, and be thrown into the water, and look for crabs and birds. "Throw you!" she says to Seth and Grandpa, asking for them to lift her up and splash her down in the waves again, and again, and again. I think I've never had more fun at the beach than with her, watching her.
At this house there are also Grandma and Grandpa and a parade of family friends who simply love to play with our girl for hours at a time. Which means Mama gets to read an entire book and go for a run, and Papa gets to play tennis and drink wine with lunch, and we go out by ourselves, feeling both liberated and like we've forgotten something terribly important, as we wander the towns and have drinks and long meals unfettered by a toddler.
And I think, how can we ever go home now? Home will never be as good as this, as this right here. Home can't measure up, home is going to be disappointing after this. Seth and I decided that the only thing we really missed from our house was our mattress.
We do the endless circle of thought in our heads, like we do every time we are there. How could we move to Boston? Where would we work? How could we get to come here more often, every weekend, off season, all summer, every summer? Could we move somewhere else that is closer? How could we do it, how could we do it, how?
And there are never good answers. Because we have these DC-specific jobs, ones you can't find anywhere else, and we don't really know how or if our expertise transfers somewhere else. We are lawyers, and therefore have no actual marketable skills. We can't match our salaries, benefits, hours anywhere else. We have a good life, we do, smack in the middle of Our Nation's Capital, with the museums, the Mall, the monuments. But we start to wonder if it is good enough, good enough for our girl. We can't fit a playhouse, a child-sized picnic table, a swath of lawn, a dock, a beach, animals, a pond into the immediate constrictions of our urban rowhouse life.
I could have used a month there, at least. A month where my beloved tiny girl gets to go to the beach and see farm animals, and ride in boats, and climb everything in sight. A month where my husband and I figure out how to be ourselves again, some more, now, as a married pair. A month of my daughter being adored by her grandparents. A month where the Olive can push open a screen door and run outside, and be on grass, under trees, looking at water. "Inna water," she says when she sees the deep blue of the tidal pond fifty yards from the back door. "I wan' go inna water."
Even as I lament being back to our regularly scheduled life, where our house feels small, where there is only a postage-stamp yard and an alley at our back door, I am inspired. I have been researching farms and zoos and beaches and pools and classes where I can take my girl and feed her love of these things she has discovered over these last days. To make our good life better. To get her ready for next summer.
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