Zibby Mag

By Olivia Fitzpatrick

My mother and I say goodbye to summer, to the outdoor shower, all the dry sand swept from the cement, and to the porch swing, stripped of its cushions. We leave white jeans and patterned maxi dresses in the closet like a promise of July nights still to come. Our bookmarked novels go unpacked, unfinished on our nightstands, waiting. The summers of my life, even the ones that at the time felt unforgettable, blend together in my mind like watercolors. But I always remember what it feels like to leave—it’s poignant even in hindsight.

The year I was nine, my mother, frustrated by the Garden State Parkway traffic, got off at the Ocean City exit. She took us, her four school-bound children in our car jam-packed with luggage, to the movies on the boardwalk. We were further delayed by a milkshake nightcap at The Chatterbox. When we finally emerged in our Pennsylvania driveway, it was late and dark and cold, the air humming with crickets and frogs. She never wanted it to end—we’re alike in that way.

The summers of my life, even the ones that at the time felt unforgettable, blend together in my mind like watercolors. But I always remember what it feels like to leave—it’s poignant even in hindsight.

My mother says it’s because we’re Irish that we feel most at home by the sea. But my father is Irish, too, and he embraces the change of season, the early morning meetings and nights spent at the ballpark watching playoff baseball. My sister, Lacey, buys beautiful boots and sweaters, and my brother Daniel is relieved to get his traffic-free Friday nights back. Even my sister, Mia, who is a schoolteacher and has to adjust to being back in a classroom, doesn’t linger. She packs her little red car, pulls off our familiar block onto Ocean Drive, and doesn’t look back. My mother and I embrace our despair and wait until it’s dark to go home. We always look back.

Fall isn’t so terrible. I’ve loved school most of my life, making my September sadness inexplicable and illogical. And yet, I can remember starting the fifth grade with aching clarity. Those first few weeks, the sight of the yellow school bus turning onto my suburban street made me nauseous, among other things I formerly delighted in: the smell of new contact paper, the taste of the icy thick chocolate milk on tap in the cafeteria. Growing pains, hormones, and anxiety were all suggested to explain away my malaise. Only my mother saw it for what it actually was: the inherited seasonal melancholy. It typically resolved itself in time—the start of October to be more specific—but that year she tried an experimental treatment and let me play hooky. The two-hour drive passed quickly and though the air was crisper than when we’d left, the streets emptier, everything looked the same and I could smell the ocean. I took comfort in that.

What is it about the shore that makes my reasonable mother say things like, “Do you think our house misses us?” Maybe it’s the freedom, so inconsistent with other places, other seasons: the freedom to read, to nap, to forgo dinner for soft serve. I pulled my first all-nighter at the shore reading The Tale of Despereaux. Our house then was the bottom floor of a clapboard Cape Cod with blue shutters. Mia slept soundly in her twin, as I read by the small lamp on the wicker nightstand we shared. It was the first book that ever made me cry, dawn glowing lavender against the painted walls. Later, there was the summer in the house on the water where I’d talk on the phone to my first boyfriend on the balcony for hours, frosted lanterns illuminating the black bay below. I read The Great Gatsby on that terrace. I can recall reaching the end and laying the paperback down on my tan thighs, closing my eyes to nap in the afternoon sun.

We look back in tandem, behind our dark-rimmed glasses, matching blonde ponytails. One last look, one last glimpse of heaven before we return, with luck, a year older.

I’ve been accused of being spoiled for my wistfulness. It’s true, I am spoiled—immeasurably lucky for a lifetime of summers spent down the shore. But I think that’s why I’m sad. Not because I take it for granted, but because I know how good it is: the never-ending ocean, the unobstructed time with my family, with my mom.

I never knew my mother’s mother, Frances Lacey McDermott. She died of cancer when my mom was expecting our Lacey, over Labor Day Weekend 1989. They spent a final summer together, toying with baby names in beach chairs, watching pink sunsets that looked like heaven. For a woman who is so melodramatic about summer ending, my mother doesn’t dwell on the people she’s loved and lost. She is clear-sighted about life, how it is finite, and how she will one day be gone, too. Maybe that’s what we love most about the shore, what she tried to show me on my hooky day in the fifth grade: that it goes on without you when you leave, and that it’s the same when you return, even if the people aren’t.

It’s not just the coastline or the beach, but the dive bars that don’t change, the seafood restaurants that haven’t been renovated since 1962. The Atlantic City Boardwalk, where my father’s father wooed his mother, is still standing. The line into Shenanigan’s, where my parents had their first kiss, stays long. A hundred years from now, when I am gone, the ocean will kiss the surf, broken shells lining the path. Lifeguards will turn in at five o’clock, pushing their stands toward the dunes. A young woman will read A Tree Grows In Brooklyn on the porch for the very first time. Girls and their mothers will skip dinner for Kohr Brothers’ cones, grinning like they got away with something. Death and taxes and the shore: it’s all we can count on.

I showed my mother a Joni Mitchell song I love this past summer called “Urge for Going.” She’d never heard it before, and she had me repeat this lyric: “all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out.” September has come again. Life is for the living, and so we get out. But we always look back. We look back in tandem, behind our dark-rimmed glasses, matching blonde ponytails. One last look, one last glimpse of heaven before we return, with luck, a year older. We can’t help ourselves.

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Olivia Fitzpatrick is an MFA candidate at New York University and a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania. Her essays have appeared in 34th Street Magazine, Twenty2 Media and Constitution Daily Blog. She is working on a novel.