For the past week, I’ve been somewhat removed from “civilization as we know it,” meaning I had no internet and sporadic cell service while staying at my family’s cottage on Cape Cod. I was around people, and plenty of them, people I’ve known since before I realized I knew people at all, people who know my name though I may not know theirs or even what they look like, because my maiden name of Cooper and it’s telltale physical family traits (small nose, large brown eyes, dark hair, round face) goes way back on the Cape and our family just “know people”. But though I was surrounded by others, the lack of technology induced connectedness to the world made me feel secluded and at peace. I chatted with people who knew my great grandfather, his parents and siblings, and the entire line of us that sprung from them and have trekked to the Cape ever since Bap (great grandfather) bought the cottage back in the late 20’s. When I was young and my family still lived in New England, we spent almost the entire summer at our cottage, and I made friends with the other all-summer kids, but we fell out of touch as we grew older and apart; this year I was able to see many of their parents again and introduce them to my son, with whom another generation of Yarmouth Campgrounds Association kids begins.
Now that I have cell service again, I want to throw my phone in the ocean and never touch a smartphone again (I probably won’t though, see earlier post titled phonepocalypse). 200 unread emails from work (yes, I put the work email back on my phone). Seven voicemails with no missed call attached to them. Push notifications out the wazoo. Being bombarded with all of it at once was like meeting the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, local cheer squad, youth soccer league and the Salvation Army all at once at the entrance to the grocery store. I didn’t know what to ignore first. When all of that outside world stuff hit me after such an easy vacation, which, with a one-year-old, easy was shooting for the stars in my opinion but somehow came to be, I’ve never wanted more to return to the days of nothing but riding my bike around the campgrounds and hoping some of my friends would be in their cottages, because my old rotary phone wasn’t all that reliable and I didn’t know any of their numbers anyway. Days when all you needed to do to find someone was knock on their door. Days when all you needed to be happy was air in the tires of your bike and in your lungs. Days when fireflies mattered and so did county fairs and craft fairs and ice cream trucks. But those days aren’t mine to have anymore, they are meant for my son now, and our little family cottage at the Yarmouth Campgrounds Association on Cape Cod is the only place left on earth that I know can provide those kinds of days for him.
On this particular trip up to the Cape, my son had small victories. He’s still too young to even notice a firefly let alone appreciate one. But I give him credit for fearlessly walking (holding my hands, of course, he can’t walk on his own yet) into the warm, shallow water at Dennis Pond, all the way up to his elbows. He played in the sand with his toys and ate lunch on a beach towel. He sat in a swing on the same swing set I once loved (as did my sisters and cousins and uncles and father and grandmother) at the YCGA playground, rode the merry-go-round, had ice cream at Four Seas, and visited the Kennedy memorial in Hyannisport. He went to his first Field Day and “ran”, clinging to his Aunt Colleen’s hands, in the ages 1-5 race and came in last place, but everyone cheered for him as though he’d won. We’d guessed how many M&M’s were in the jar and watched Aunt Colleen conquer the pie eating contest. He met people who knew he came from the Cooper line before I’d even introduced him as my son. He took in the Cape as much as any one-year-old could, and I think he truly enjoyed himself.
Next year, we will hope for running the 1-5 race on his own and tackling the pond with swimmies rather than my hands. We’ll hope for making some toddler friends and maybe even a tricycle of his own. Maybe even Kandy Korner downtown Hyannis, where he can pick his own 5, 10 or 25 cent candies to toss into his own basket. But this year, this year he experienced more than what I can hope for. An of course, he won’t remember it, but I caught it all on my camcorder to show him one day.
I could have taken him to Cancun or the Bahamas and he would have enjoyed himself just the same. But just like teaching him the routine of sleeping on his own, I believe that loving the Cape will come to him naturally. It’s in his blood as it is in mine. And though I know there’s nothing I can do about the technology driven world he will grow up in, I think that this place will mean to him what it means to me- a place where you can put the phone, tv remote, and computer away and just be a kid.
Ordinary Me. 