This Weekend We

A weekend full of the variety of chaos I've been missing lately. The kind packed with friends and places to be and mess after mess. 

On Saturday morning I dropped Sena off so she could get ready to march in the North Beach Christmas Parade with the Twin Beach Players, but while doing so discovered that the traffic across town was barely moving. When I did finally get home, it meant I only had a few minutes to pack up the other three kids to get back in time to see it all happen. We grabbed warm clothes but neglected hair brushes, and sat on the sidelines as friends and neighbors marched by.  The kids happily snatched up as much candy as their sticky little hands could grab, Arlo amazed that this was even better than Halloween, which requires you to walk from house to house to collect the goods. With the parade, he could sit in one spot and have candy canes and chocolate kissed thrown directly at his blonde head.

We scooted out as soon as it ended, opting out of meeting Santa Claus, a figure none of my children have ever actually spent time with. They've never much cared, and he isn't someone I play up, in large part from laziness.

A couple of hours later, my friend Carrie showed up with Arlo's very best friend, Felix. A friend who lives too far away but remains dear to his heart despite long stretches of not seeing him. We ate and drank and watched the Bad Lip Reading Star Wars Video more than a few times. The kids ran around and circles and never fussed or fought with each other. Gus, despite being six years older, played with them, and helped include Alamae. 

After they left the next morning, I went to Annapolis to help in Joanna's shop, enjoying fig brandy punch and the carolers outside her door. The greenery and Christmas lights on Maryland Avenue are perfectly festive. before closing the shop and heading to our political action / accountability meeting, I started to get text messages and notifications that the Army Corp of Engineers is rerouting the Dakota Access Pipeline, a decision that continues to bring me joy as I start this Monday. 

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This Weekend We // Friday Night Farmer's Market

I remember when then the town first announced that they were starting a Friday night farmer's market. It seemed poorly planned: who wants to go food shopping on a Friday night? Little did I know how perfect the concept was. It's only one part shopping. It's a weekly giant block party with music and food and wine and beer.

It's a little overwhelming sometimes. The journey to buy our weekly ration of five dozen eggs ( we really love eggs), is interrupted by a half dozen people to wave to or shake hands with or hug depending on familiarity.

This year two of my aunts and my brother started selling in the art section-- planters and drift wood hangings and beaded jewelry. If you end up down there, you should swing by and say hi. It's practically a family reunion down there.

You run into friends who offer you a covert orange crush. You get a few quarts of strawberries right before the season ends. You try to remember to get your shoes from the beach gate before venturing home with a stroller loaded down with what you hope is a week's worth of produce.  And as it turns out, it's a perfectly great way to spend a Friday night and the town knew what it was doing.

Farmer's Market Year's Past : One and Two

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Third Generation

When I was a kid, my mom would tell me about this beach, about Uncle Billie's at the end of the pier, and about the Golden Key Club where the most beautiful women she had ever seen worked (turns out they were drag queens). At the time North Beach was a summer city, full of cottages left vacant during the winter, full of vacationers looking to drink too much and gamble. The beach of her childhood was raucous and a little crass, a giant carnival. There were bars on every corner, hotels sprinkled through the neighborhoods, a bingo hall, places to rent inner tubes, segregated beaches.

By the time I was here as a kid, this beach had quieted down. The little stretch of sand was usually rather empty. The Oasis served bad french fries and scoops of bubble gum flavored ice cream to the few kids braving the jelly fish infested waters, though my mom and aunts didn't call them jelly fish: to them, they will always be sea nettles. There was no longer a net guarding the shores.There was a waterfront IGA that I found any excuse to walk to during the day: a roll of toilet paper, an ingredient needed for dinner, a pack of Bubble Yum.

The beach of my childrens' childhood is an altogether different place still: packed on weekends with day trippers from Northern Virginia and Prince George's County, paying 12 dollars to find a few square feet to lay their beach towels. There is no longer a grocery store, but we walk past the post office where my grandmother was the post master for 22 years on our way to the bakery that made my wedding cakes. And the generations whisper to each other about what was here and what is still to come.

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Starting With A Splash

The first day of every year, we walk down the North Beach Boardwalk and watch while folks, either brave or crazy, plunge into the Chesapeake. Usually Tom will join in if there is anyone in our crew who wants to participate. And this year I watched two of my sisters, a friend, a cousin, my husband and several hundred others run into the wind turned water. And I was jealous for a moment that I hadn't joined them, hadn't participated in the baptism.

For Molly and Brittany, I think 2014 is going to be an amazing year of growth and change and I am so excited to see where it leads them, and to cheer them on with my whole heart.

For me, this is going to be my year of unprecedented health and happiness. I can just feel it, but I am also willing to work for it.
I don't see huge changes on my horizon, but I see joy and thanksgiving and energy and enthusiasm. This is a year I will be mindful- mindful of how I treat my body, how I spend my money, how I mother my children, how I nurture my marriage.
I want to focus on goals, large and small, each and every month, and I want to stand on North Beach on the first day of 2015 with Molly and Brittany feeling accomplished and full of gladness and so damn proud of those two. I am excited for what this year holds.

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This Weekend We- Friday Night Farmer's Market

I didn't mean to stay in Calvert County. I didn't intend to live in my hometown forever. I didn't realize that my adventures would have fingers and toes and would crawl into my bed at night, and that my passport would collect dust rather than stamps.
For years I dreamed of leaving, of packing my family and going. Somewhere exotic or somewhere urban.
But I've grown content.
I have settled, and I like it.
This Friday, like most Fridays, we walked down to the farmer's market. We bought produce and jalapeno smoked cheddar, kettle corn and flowers. The kids played on the pirate ship and danced to old time music. I ran into high school friends and neighbors and people from church, all along the edges of my favorite brackish water.

No, I didn't mean to stay here, but I was meant to. 

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