A Family Portrait Around a Campfire

 

 

I love cold-ish weather at the beach. Maybe it's because me and cold beaches go way back. (I used to be a warm-weather girl all the way, but Okinawa has thoroughly cured me of that.) Long before Virginia Beach or endless Panamanian summers in the sand, there was the place I was sorta-kinda from for a while: Northern California in August--sweatshirts and jeans and toes timidly dipped in pebbly water that stabbed like a knife made of ice. And before that, I was born in Massachusetts. But I don't think that counts.

 

 

So when we drove up to Okuma  ["Recreational Facility, est. 1947* "] on Friday afternoon and it was overcast, sweatshirt-jeans-and-flipflops weather, I was happy. That is the definition of cozy. Well, that plus some damp wood and lots of lighter fluid. And my family.

 

Eva showed some serious maturity in being willing to go to bed alone in the cabin, while we sat right outside by the fire. Well, there were some bumps in the road to the land of Nod, actually. The Pater Familias and I were sitting there reading, or in my case deleting pictures, when we heard an un-subtle thump, creak, swing, and saw Eva standing there in her pajamas and her fuzzy socks, looking distinctly sheepish. 

"Eva, go to bed!" ::skitter skitter crash:: and we knew she was back in her tent. Minutes passed. Surely she was asleep by now. But wait, what was that?  Cre...

...ee...

...ea...

...aa...

 

...k!

 

The door was slightly cracked.

Then, oh-so-slowly, one half of one toenail showed.

Then three blond hairs.

Then a little flared-nostril nose.

And one eye.

We had to finish snickering secretly into our beers before we could muster the parentness to send her packing back to bed.

--------------------------------------

* "As soon as we cleared away all the bombs!"

Comments

[Frompost2post.wordpress.com]

I love cold-ish weather at the beach. I too, was a warm weather beach girl, but college cured me of that. I've seen a lot of beautiful things in my life and one of my absolute favorites is the New England beaches in winter. They are abandoned and freezing and wonderfully beautiful. I would much rather sit on a beach in a sweat shirt and jeans in fall/winter/spring than in my bathing suit in the hot summer sun.