Martha's Vineyard

When I visited Martha's Vineyard Sunday with my parents, godmother and her friend it made me a bit sentimental, or at the very least, thoughtful about my childhood.

The home we visited belongs to my father's aunt, Lisina. She and her late-husband Frank hired my dad to design the house when I was a baby. When we arrived, very strong memories returned to me.

There is a long and bumpy dirt road through the woods which lead to the house, and as we rode a taxi and bumped along, I thought about the VW bus which lived with the house for many years. I believe it was blue, and I will always remember how it distinctly smelled of sunblock, sand, and a bit of plastic, how my bare legs would stick to the white plastic seats with a dotted texture. How it had no shocks whatsoever, and we bounced around back there free of seatbelts. And the sand, of course. there were always plenty of sand under your butt and legs. It's too bad that VW bus is no more.

I found this online. It's not far off though I do not remember any blue on the seats or armrests even!

The house, split into a winterized end and an end which only works in summer, smelled of cedar all the time. Over time it faded, of course, but wandering into the summer end reminded me of the days with my cousins, sleeping in bunk beds, and shaking flashlights at each other from one end of the hall to create a strobe light effect. This was also the same place my cousins and I wrote our "magazine".

I was given access to a wood shop underneath the house where I remember building wooden boats - three of them as I recall, with wood scraps and nails.

From the house there is a path down to a beach which takes about ten minutes to walk. Walking along it, I remember how I would traverse this path as a kid - by running as fast as I could! I loved the zoomy-ness of the brush flying by me and the dappled light sparkling through the trees, and even when I walked it during our visit, I could remember what it felt like. I mean, literally, I remember how my legs felt fast and strong and I never winded. A stark contrast to being a grown-up!

It was along this same path that my brother and I, and maybe our cousins too, likely, collected huckleberries for pancakes.

Now is a beautiful place, but then, it was just magical to me.

This long hall was our "strobe" light location. The ladder on the left led to a loft of beds.

Along the path to the beach