A check, which becomes a little cash. A call to Sunbeam, which becomes an untethering. A Google search for “Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast” — which becomes a send off.
Cute Husband and I grab our fuzzy chicken-legged baby and escape.
We hit the road after 5:00 on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We find Dennis Port off of Highway 28. The scrub pine thins out, grass gives way to sand, and houses climb higher on their stilts until finally we can peek around one and see … ocean.
I stick my toes in the cold wet sand while Cute Husband checks us in. I dip Edeny’s toes, too.
We are Hungry, and we ask where we should eat, and the woman says Italian? And we say — Are you kidding? And she says, seafood, then — you need to go to the Ocean House.
And we do, even after we see the menu and the price list that puts little holes in the pits of our stomachs, but this is an Escape so off we go.
It is about two blocks down the street. Serendipity.
We find the dark-wood paneled lounge, with tall windows peering out to gray ocean, just like a living room I once knew long ago. I consider the ache, but we do it anyway, and after a martini it aches less.
A lightning storm out to sea, cold vodka, and a bento box appetizer with seafood wrapped and fried, layered, chopped raw (FYI ahi tuna works with buttered popcorn, don’t ask me how).
I saw the lobster on the menu and tried to talk myself out of it. $45? And all the work is done for you? Puh-lease. Just pop those bad boys in the ole kettle for a bit, at $5 a pound. Besides I am a New England drawn-butter girl, and this sounds a little too fancy-fancy for me.
But Cute Husband makes me, and he orders the cod special and I save a bit of my martini and when the lobster arrives it is stacked, shelled, on a pile of jasmine rice.
Four sauces — one of them drawn butter — come in behind it in little squares. I slice into the lobster — pillowy and succulent, bring it to my mouth and it’s like a sea cloud and I may never boil another lobster again. (The chile, garlic cream and lemongrass squares? — Swiped clean. Untouched: the greasy puddle of drawn butter.)
I order the lemon coconut cake. We chat about celebrity deaths, the stock market and Great Houses Past. The coconut cake arrives with a chocolate spoon artfully posed in a pile of cream, with a shadow of itself sprinkled in cocoa on the plate below.
The bill comes — a week’s-worth-of-groceries bill– and we pay it and that’s when the server notices Schmoopy tucked into the sling, one foot sticking out, and congratulates us on our skills as new parents and we thank her without telling her how much practice we’ve had.
An ocean walk in the dark and then clean sheets, a puffy comforter. Chicken-Legs tucks in between us, up to her chin, “Guys this is great! We gotta do this more often!” She snores all night long.
Breakfast-by-the-sea, eggs and coffee and pastries and a rain-spatted window.
A text from Sunbeam, “I have work covered. No curfew for you, be free!”
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!” I text back (with just that many A’s,) and we hit the road and go South, just as South as we can go, driving and talking about lobster and the weather and Why Anyone Cares What Religion Anyone Else Is.
We stop in Chatham and then at the National Seashore and we try not to kill the cyclists or ram the bad drivers and we consider when we will have children old enough to go kayaking.
We find Provincetown and park and load the Schmoop into the sling and walk. It is a Portuguese festival because, apparently, this little crumb of the world is steeped in all things Portuguese and gay counter-culture.
Breeders. We are out as Breeders, with our mini-van and spawn in a sling, looking for coffee.
We have arrived at the Blessing of the Fleet (Serendipity!) and follow the parade to the Harbor — dancers and ship’s crews and a trolly full of backup for whatever God you want to pray to.
Two Yankee sailors and an Invocation.
A “critter tour” — you can take a boat out to pick up funky things from the sea bottom. We didn’t do this, but want to come back with the rest of our spawn.
I spent this trip figuring out how much I could cram into one cell-phone picture, with a baby in a sling.
This is the coolest store in the entire Commonwealth. They sell: lobster traps, old anchors, American Airlines First Class dinnerware, wedding gowns. And men’s underwear.
A local stained glass shop:
My new hero. Ellie — singing her heart out in a silky baritone.
I ask her permission to photograph her, and she says “yes” and I think: wow. To stand on a sidewalk and sing and know who you are amid the gawkers and picture-takers. I have less to be gawked at about — I am pedantic, vanilla, suburban — and I’m not that brave.
Lunch. The man at the parking lot told us the Mayflower Cafe was where to go. After asking him, we decided he looked sketchy and we didn’t believe him and then we go there anyway and realize when it comes to local, Sketchy is often Right On.
We eat clams — mine fried, his steamed — and drink more cold vodka — mine a martini, his a bloody Mary — and talk about gas prices and auto repair and Whether Our Lives are Hard or Easy.
People passing in the window peer in at our baby and wave to her and talk about how freaking adorable she is.
And then we drive home in a light gray rain. The pine scrub grows closer together, sand gives way to grass and then asphalt and then we are on the highway at foreign exits that grow closer to familiar exits until they are really familiar ones until they are the old comfortable worn ones and we turn off and then we are down a pretty green road and find a little tilty-floored farmhouse nestled in trees draped in honeysuckle, with beach towels drying/getting rained on on the front lawn.
“DADDDYYY MOMMA!!!”
Man those kids are freaking cute. Sunbeam looks intact. She slept with them in the big bed, she says, and after they tucked in the Fleet of Dolls the only room left was stretched across the foot, which was fine. I hope she found the extra blankets and pillows.
They ate biscuits and chocolate and made art and tomorrow they want to go to the fabric store and the Terror Tot indoor playground and a movie. We laugh and say “yes, yes yes!”
And we catch eyes over their heads, and clasp hands and squeeze and it’s really really good to be Home.
***
By the Sea Inn, Dennis Port, MA
http://www.bytheseaguests.com/
Ocean House
http://www.oceanhouserestaurant.com/
Provincetown
http://www.provincetown.com/
Mayflower Cafe
http://www.mayflower-ptown.com/
Home is definitely where the heart is
Eden is just gorgeous, Liz! She looks so healthy and pink!
Glad you got away. I hope it did your souls some good. Of course coming home to your lovelies probably was the best part of the whole trip!
I’m totally craving real seafood now…
Oh, Liz. I’m so happy you got to go away together, and so happy you got to come back. Coming back is wonderful. I second the above: Eden is looking FANTASTIC. What a beautiful girl she is. And I, too, need seafood now. Darn you for sparking a craving in a land-locked pregnant girl.
Awesome! So glad you could have an escape — you completely and definitely deserved one. Thanks for sharing the details and bringing a smile into my afternoon.
Isn’t Eden an absolute sweety? She looks just adorable – and if I’d not been reading over the past weeks, I’d never have guessed she’d been ill; as Jennboree and Amanda say, she looks so healthy and well.
Love and blessings to you and yours, hope you’re enjoying the resumption of normal life (and hope you get another Escape to tell us about before too long).
Thank you for sharing that. You just took me with you. I can smell the sea and taste the vodka.
What a wonderful, and much-needed, escape for you and CH! So glad you splurged on the lobster, too. I need to convince my own dear husband to abandon practicality and do the same.
Oh, and what an abso-freaking-lutely adorable picture of Eden in the sling! She is beautiful, darling, and precious beyond words. May she always be a blessing to you despite the tears and trials of these early days.
Next time you are on the Cape, come to The Vineyard! I’ll be your personal tour guide. I’m sure my kids would get along fantastically w/ yours!
Jenn from MV
Well, that was fun! It was fun for all of us to see a bit of the Cape and have a getaway… your photos and descriptions are great! For someone who has seen too much of rain-slicked decks at home, a stained-glass shop is something to aspire to. ( And Eden IS gorgeous!)
I am literally green with envy, as our quasi-annual trip to the cape and to see the inlaws would be taking place at this very moment had life not gotten in the way. I would be in Falmouth, at that silly British Pub a block from the condo, drinking cream ale and eating fresh seafood and ignoring the bill because HEY we are on vacation.
I was so happy when you twittered you were getting away, everyone needs that once in a while. Thank heavens for Sunbeams.
I am at our place on the Vineyard as we speak, iced coffee, a piece of Sourdough with melted brie, the ocean breeze, the ipod in the background and the ability to have my feet in the sand and be on my laptop all at the same time. Oh and the kids are off playing with their “summer” friends. This is my escape.
I love the picture in the Mayflower, with the world whizzing by.
SO happy for you (and CH, too) !!! Eden is beautiful, I love the fuzz!
Oh and to think you went to all the stores I love in P-town and although I would love to be there now I too had a special Sunday morning breakfast with two wonderful girls,oops three Sunbeam was there too! The biscuits made by Sunbeams Dad and the stories we heard or should I say the secrets that were told. We both hope to have another Sunday morning like the on we just shared, that being said you know if you ever need a break we have plenty of room for more girls!!! By the way this is sunbeams proud Mom xo
I spent every summer of my childhood in West Yarmouth, Cape Cod and this post made me miss it all so much. I haven’t been in a good 5 years or so and I think I may just have to make a trip.
I can’t wait to cook the shrimp I have for dinner tonight. And you’re making me very excited to hit the opposite coast as you next week and have clams!
Eden is adorable! Not like a peanut at all!
Your lovely baby is getting so big! She smiles now? I love that. Glad you a nice get away
That looks like a perfect mini-break
I hope you had a fabulous time – it sounds like you did!
Eden is just perfect – absolutely adorable.
I spent every entire summer of my childhood on Chappaquidick with cousins and aunts and you just brought homesick tears to my eyes for boiled lobster, fried clams, summers where you need a sweatshirt, little green ferries, salt air, wharfs where people still fish, beach plums, biking on dirt roads, cannonball park and salt box houses. I’m in NC now some 20 years later, where summers are so not cool, and I still can’t break the habit of packing a sweatshirt for the beach.
Gorgeous post. Eden is beautiful.
Good for you, you deserved this! The getaway and the the martinis.
Thank God for Sunbeam. Oh, and in my experience, sketchy is almost always best when you ask the locals.
So happy you went away, and so happy you’re home again.
Glad you got a llittle break. Baby looks wonderful.
DROP THE LOAF IN THE OCEAN MUUHGAHAHAHAHA