Off to Make New Memories (and re-live old ones)

After some discussion, we finally decided to splurge a little with our rebate check and go to the beach this week. We're trying to be a little economical and go Tuesday, Wednesday and come back home Thursday, when the hotel rates are cheaper. Hopefully the beach won't be as crowded during the week, too.

We are going to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. Since meeting my husband we've been going annually, which was fun for me because before that I hadn't gone since I was six years old. In those days my mother's cousin owned a beach house down the coast on Dewey Beach, and we (my mom, sister and I) would go down with cousins or friends while my Dad and his friends would go out west to fish for trout. This "girl trip" was always a lot of fun, even that last year when I had to go with my finger wrapped up in bandages after breaking it in a freak door-slamming accident. I can still vividly remember distracting myself while my mom changed the dressing on it (it looked pretty gross to a 6 year-old) by reading my first Wonder Woman comic book.

Sometimes I really think I have some sort of psychic abilities. I'm not saying I can foretell the future or find missing children, but there are these uncanny coincidences always seem to happen to me and the people close to me. A lot of it happens with the phone: sometimes I'll know exactly who's on the phone and what they want before I even see the Caller ID; more than once I've picked up the phone to call someone, and before I can dial the phone rings and it's them. Or I get the call through and it just so happens they were getting ready to call me.

I'm not going to go into the whole long list of incidents, but here's the most recent one. I have not talked to my dad since last Sunday, so I haven't informed him that we're going to Rehoboth. Yet this morning I checked my email and saw a message from my dad -- which is odd enough, because he rarely e-mails me -- which contained these photos. (Sorry they're small -- it's all I could download and save from Dad's email)

I had almost forgotten that my dad and his friend owned a boat called the Rusty Nail -- yeah, a real luxury yacht! -- and they kept it docked on the Indian River Inlet, which is in the Rehoboth area. That's me in the photo on the left, dressed in pink and looking like I'm on the telephone with someone. Even though it was so long ago -- in my preschool days! -- I can still remember pieces of these adventures out to sea, posing for the camera and holding a fish that was as long as I was tall, staying in our friend's camper, even the night we had a flat tire on the Bay Bridge. They were such fun times, in the days before my parents' marriage went downhill and life was still carefree and happy.

Maybe that's why I still have this fondness for these trips to Rehoboth, and I now try to create new happy memories for my daughter in this same location. Coincidentally, my husband and his family also made many summer trips to this beach, too, so we're both able to relive our childhoods through these visits. I'll try to take some photos while we're there and share them with you when we get back.