I took the kids to the beach by myself this summer.  We go without Josh sometimes, but always with a friend.  But this summer, the kids wanted to go alone, just the three of us.

When we talked about it and the trip was weeks away, it seemed completely do-able.  Easy, in fact.  But the night before we were set to leave, my stomach was in knots.  I would be hours away from home, without a back-up adult for almost 200 miles.

But we had made our mix CDs, purchased potato chips, brought up the sand toys.

We packed up the car and started driving.

*******

The first thing we did when we got to the beach was rent bicycles. Actually, the first thing we did was request a different room since the sliding door wouldn’t lock.  But the second thing we did was rent bicycles.

I almost hadn’t packed our bike helmets since we’ve never taken them biking at the beach.  They only learned how to ride a two-wheeler a few months ago.  And taking them biking alone for the first time?  That just seemed like craziness.  And yet I heard myself asking them after we got settled in our new room whether they wanted to go for a bike ride.

So we walked over to the bike rental place and got three bikes.  In order to get to the bike path, we needed to walk several meters alongside the road.  Again, my stomach was in knots wondering what the hell I was getting myself into.  But then we were on the bike path, wobbling along.  I rode in the back, the ChickieNob rode in the middle, and the Wolvog rode in front.

We did a five mile loop (after I had fixed the ChickieNob’s skirt from becoming completely grey as it hung over the dirty back wheel of the bike; brilliant!) and then rode back to the hotel for a swim before dinner.  We had done it: bicycled this long distance (at least, it is for two new bike riders) all alone.

*******

That evening, we got two bits of bad news.  The first came right before dinner, and it made me feel ill.  I ended up pulling over the car before we went into the restaurant to eat and telling the twins what had happened.  We were all alone; this was something I would have talked about with Josh.  But Josh wasn’t there, so I told the twins instead.  While they didn’t have any brilliant advice, they listened, and sometimes that is all you need.

The second piece of bad news came later in the evening, right before bed.  There is nothing that reinforces that idea of aloneness that comes from receiving bad news while the rest of the world seems to be blissfully trucking along around you than being physically apart from anyone you know.  We were emotionally an island, the only three people around who understood.  And we were physically an island, the only three people each other knew for miles.  Oh, and we were actually on an island, just to drive the metaphor home.

*******

We decided to go for another bike ride the next morning.  The woman who works there told us about a secluded beach that Josh and I had never heard of in all our years of going there.  “Let’s try to find it,” I told the kids.

“No thanks,” said the ChickieNob, uninterested in riding a half mile down an unknown path.  It was one thing to bike where I had been before even if it was new to her.  It was another for all three of us to leave the figurative and literal well-worn path.

But suddenly it felt imperative that we see this beach, that we all take the chance with the road.  So we made the right and started riding all alone down a sandy road.  And at the end, we ditched the bikes and climbed the dune and found ourselves on an almost empty beach — only five or so people on the enormous stretch of sand.

This was now going to be our beach.

Back on the bike path, the Wolvog took a terrible spill off the bike when his wheel hit the edge of the road.  I watched him tumble off and then the ChickieNob swerve to try to miss his outstretched arm.  For one terrifying second, I couldn’t tell how badly he had been hurt, but her wheel hadn’t clipped his skin or passed over bone.  He stood up and told me he had to stop shaking before he could ride again.

The worst happened.  I mean, hadn’t that been my fear the day before, the reason I was so nervous to take them biking?  One of the kids had fallen off their bike and gotten hurt and I was all alone with them with no help in sight.  It all came down to me.  And yet here we were, dealing with it.  The worst happened and there was nothing to do except catch our collective breath and tend to our wounds and then get back on the bike.

Riding back, we paused to stare at a jellyfish in the water off the bridge.  I named it Herman, and we watched him slowly squinch his way across the water, like a disembodied lung breathing.

“When I was little,” I told the twins, “I believed that if I spat in the water at the end of summer, I would have good luck for the year.”  I have no idea why I believed that my drool hitting a body of water would change my fate, but we decided that I would donate my saliva to the channel in order to counteract yesterday’s the bad news just in case.

*******

We went to the beach and came up against my second fear: taking the kids in the water by myself.  I am not tall enough to stand where we can ride waves.  I am not strong enough to hold two kids while treading water.  And they are not confident enough in the ocean to jump waves without me.

I could have told them that it was too dangerous to try at all, but we devised a system where one child stayed on the sand where I could see them at all times.  The other child came in the water with me.  And every two or three waves, we’d look back to check on the child on the sand.

We swam out past the break and bobbed up and down in the water.  Every so often, my foot would come down on the hard smooth shell of a horseshoe crab, and I would inwardly shudder.  If Josh had been there, he would have been the one to take them in the water.  But here I was, all alone, and I had to suck it up and bob in the waves for an hour at a time, even if it meant my feet sometimes landing on sea life.

When we got off the beach, we got a third bit of bad news, and I almost started laughing despite the terribleness because it was just too ridiculous; for everything to implode while I was all alone with the kids, miles from home.  After I got them showered, I went out to the balcony and called Josh — sometimes you need to process things with an adult — so I could have a long cry.  And then I moved the kids on to dinner and play time because what else can you do when you are alone except keep moving forward?

*******

All summer, the ChickieNob had wanted to conquer a particularly enormous climbing activity at the beach, one in which she didn’t have the strength to actually attempt on her own (as is, she only met the weight minimum by two pounds).  But I convinced the park employee to let me go up with her despite being terrified of heights and purchased us two tickets.  I was the only adult on the climbing attraction. (To be completely honest, the other kids on the wall scattered to watch from down below once we started to attempt this.  There was something a bit disconcerting about a grown woman grunting her way up 30 feet.)  I was terrified I wouldn’t actually be able to get to the top, and the ChickieNob was certain she wouldn’t be able to get to the top.

I refused to look down or at anything that wasn’t the ChickieNob so I missed the view from the top.  Because yes, we got to the top.  And we came down triumphant.  Alone, neither of us could have reached the summit.  Back on firm ground, I held her while we rocked with relief and whispered that we’d do the same thing this year.  Neither of us would have to get through all the bad situations alone that had just gotten dumped in our laps.  We’d have each other’s backs and get through the year one nauseatingly dizzy step at a time.

Absolutely a perfect moment.

*******

The next day, we realized that we hadn’t seen any wild horses yet this trip.  As we drove over the bridge, I told myself that if we saw horses, it meant that everything would be okay.  And if we didn’t see horses, it would be a sign from the universe that nothing that we were worrying about would work out.

We really really needed to see horses.

As we drove down a stretch of road, we pulled over to scan the woods.  And there, in a clearing by a clump of trees, stood a pack of seven brown-and-white horses.  Seven horses — isn’t that a lucky number?  The Wolvog couldn’t see them at first, so I made him contort his body halfway into the front seat so he could see out my window.  The only way it would come true is if we all saw them; so we all saw them.

When we got to the beach, we went to jump waves, but the ocean was ten times rougher than it had been the day before.  We were being knocked around and swallowing a lot of water, so we decided to get out after ten minutes.

After we got back on the sand, we realized that we had set up our blanket next to a horseshoe crab.  He must have been washed in with the morning tide and couldn’t get back into the ocean.  We asked a passing lifeguard if there was anything we could do for the crab, but he picked it up and told us that he had died a few hours earlier.

“Things get washed up on the beach every day.  If you had come here this morning, there was an enormous shark that got beached.  Had to get it off the sand at five in the morning.”

Wait.  What?  Enormous shark?

“There are sharks?” I asked.  “Like this close to the edge?”

“Lady, this isn’t a swimming pool.  You share the ocean with all those animals.  You get what you get.”

Fine, I wasn’t saying that the sharks couldn’t be there too.  I just wanted the sharks to be somewhere far away.  The ocean is a big place; why did we all need to swim together?

He pointed to a place where the waves were breaking a second time a few meters off shore from the first break and told us that it was a trough in the ocean where sharks and skates fed.  Did they ever bother humans?  Not often.  But if we didn’t like the idea of swimming that close to fish, we shouldn’t go in the water because even though we had never seen so much as a dorsal fin, the water around us was teaming with more than the occasional horseshoe crab underfoot.

After he walked away, I looked at the twins and said that there was only one thing to do now.  We had to go in the water so we didn’t let our fear of the sea life build between trips to the beach.  So we held hands and ran into the water, swimming to the first break.  We bobbed up and down for ten minutes again, being knocked over by huge waves, and decided that we had proved our point.  No one else was in the water since the waves were so rough, and while we wanted to prove that we were brave enough to swim near fish, we were not stupid enough to swim when no one was swimming.

Every once in a while, aloneness is a sign.

*******

We went to the ice cream store one more time before we headed home.  After we threw out our empty cups and wiped our mouths and said goodbye to the ice cream store staff, we got in the car and sat in the parking lot for a minute while I rested my head on the steering wheel and cried.

It is so hard to enter aloneness, but it is so hard to leave it too.  To come back to the rest of the world and leave your island.  For those three days, it was just us against the world, and we could shut out everything happening back at home.  Pretend it wasn’t happening.  We could curl up in bed together and watch Hotel Transylvania, and talk about things I believed when I was little, and play pinball.  I could lie on the sand and read the Hunger Games and play catch with the Wolvog and search for seashells.  We could stay up until late and eat potato chips right before dinner and tell the hotel staff not to bother making our beds because we were just going to mess them up again anyway.

We put back on our Beatles mix for the ride home, starting with “Here Comes the Sun.”  We drove back over the causeway, the light glinting off the water to make the salt marshes turn a brilliant green, a colour that seemed so hopeful that it looked unnatural.  But we believed in it, since we were looking for signs from the universe.

We believed in that greenness.

And we drove home.

…It’s up to you to provide it.

This is pretty much it — the end of August and the last chance to get Measure of Love at $1.99. (Amazon featured it as a monthly deal for the Kindle for the entire month of August.)  I would deeply appreciate any help you could give in getting word out about the promotion.  Telling a friend, Facebooking it, tweeting it, blogging about it, etc.

I notice when you do.  It means a lot to me.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Goodbye Ramona, Hello Margaret” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Tiara.
• “Whatever It Is…” (Where the *Bleep* is our Stork?)
• “Just What?” (Where the *Bleep* is our Stork?)
• “On Acceptance” (Two Adults, One Child)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I too had marked “On Acceptance” by Two Adults, One Child for the Roundup when I read it last Friday.  It begins with a moment of perfect peace on the ride to work.  It was a difficult day emotionally: the unfulfilled due date, what should have been her second child’s second birthday.  She juxtaposes that internal turmoil with the quiet, constant hum of the car engine, and what the reader gets is a heartbreaking thought: acceptance that her babies are truly and irrecoverably gone.  She writes, “I am tired.  And I don’t particularly want to play this game anymore.”  It’s just a gorgeous post.

Stepping Stones has a post about the movie Up, making me see it in a way that I hadn’t seen it before.  The first time she watched it, she didn’t know she was infertile.  And now she is step-parenting while still trying to build her family years later in this new marriage.  While her description of what people can draw from the plot is amusingly accurate, it was the end lines of the post that got under my skin: “I love Bear for asking if I wanted to turn the movie off (which I did after the funeral scene) and for holding my hand while I was watching it and for offering to put it on for the kids sometime when I’m not home.”

Lastly, In Quest of a Binky Moongee has a post about her husband’s second cousin’s baby.  Namely, about a text that may or may not have been sent years earlier, highlighting a tension that exists in the family.  Compounding that is the fact that the cousin got pregnant easily, and it is now time to see the baby.  After outlining all the ways she planned to comport herself before the door opened, she writes, “I don’t know why I am holding grudges against a fertile woman and her baby.   When that door opened and when I saw that little face, my heart melted.”  It’s a really sweet post.

The roundup to the Roundup: Measure of Love is on sale for only a little bit longer (and I’d love your help continuing to get word out).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 16th and 23rd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Our camp (the site of the Wishing Tree) had an enormous field that was surrounded by woods, and in the middle of the woods wound a creek.  Sometimes I’d go with some older campers into the woods and down to the creek, and as we crossed the field, I would have to jog to keep pace with their longer legs.  I didn’t want them going too far ahead of me, swallowed up by the trees.

As summer winds down, it feels as if it’s an older camp kid who is moving too quickly across the field, barely paying attention to the fact that I am chasing summer to keep up.

I don’t like the return to school; I never have.  I thought it would get easier, but it has only stayed the same.  August rolls around, and I start feeling morose.  Four weeks left, then three weeks left, then two weeks left… and then there is only one week left and then it is gone too.  The twins are excited to start school again; to see their friends every day even if they’re not looking forward to the return to homework and long days in the classroom. They want to know which teacher they got, who else is in their class.

But I don’t want them to return to school and leave me alone in the house with all the stillness.  It feels extra still after they have been here for weeks, and then suddenly gone again.

I can’t tell them this (can you imagine the therapy they’d need for that burden?); so instead I’m telling all of you.  Because I think you understand what I mean, both wanting them to grow up and wanting them to stay small forever.

My friend sent me one of those Snopes-worthy mass-freakout emails informing me that KILLERS COULD TELL WHERE I LIVE BY CODE EMBEDDED IN MY FACEBOOK PHOTOS!!! (Side note: why are killers always hanging out on social media sites?  Don’t they ever congregate somewhere else?)  I immediately went to the urban legend site so I could disprove the hysteria.  Except that I learned that the hysteria is actually… true.

Well, not the fact that killers are perusing your Facebook photos, but the fact that geotagging on photos has made it possible for people to see exactly where a photo was taken.  And if that picture was taken inside your kitchen… well… now they know exactly where your darling child eats pancakes every morning.

Image: Drnantu via Flickr

It’s an old bit of information, and I possibly remembered it inadvertently when I got my phone because I don’t have geotagging enabled, but if you have location services on your smartphone or digital camera, every picture you take is pinpointed by latitude and longitude.  Though it isn’t posted on the front of the photo like a timestamp, that information is accessible to others via an browser extension.  And you may not have known that it existed since it isn’t apparent at a glance.

You can see how it works in this old video:

How do you turn off geotagging if you don’t want people to know all the places you take photographs such as your home, school, or workplace?  Icanstalku.com has a guide for various devices.

Spending time on the Snopes site did allow me to peruse dozens of other common social media urban legends including how Facebook Open Graph is going to allow everyone to see all my postings (false), a Facebook status notification hack (undetermined), and your tweets are at the Library of Congress (true).

But back to geotagging: it’s true and it’s mostly unnecessary when it comes to your photographs — how often do you need to pinpoint the spot where the image was taken?  So turn off geotagging on your photos, and if you really want a higher level of privacy and don’t mind a little inconvenience when it comes to GPS-dependent sites such as Google Maps, turn off location services altogether.  I still use maps, and I sometimes turn on location services for a moment if we want to use turn-by-turn instructions.  But my default setting for location services is off.

We don’t have that much privacy in this world, but I can make it at least a little bit harder to know where my images were taken.

Cross-posted with BlogHer