Sleeping beauty

Last time, I introduced you to my real estate-wealthy aunt and uncle whose homes included a Chesapeake Bay cottage. That’s my happy place. When gadfly annoyances threaten, I simply mentally retreat to their ramshackle Cobb Island vacation home, on the Maryland side of the Bay.

After a morning of wild frolicking in the ubiquitous July sun, I could easily be lured into napping. Mom would coax me to lay down, take off my sandy Keds, wipe my overheated face with a cool washrag, and float a whisper-thin cotton sheet over me. My designated bed was actually a hard, tiny sofa tucked into an interior room. Actually, calling that space a room is an act of sheer Southern politesse. More passthrough than chamber, it had doors at either end and a few in the center which led to the legitimate bedrooms.

One door opened onto splintery porch steps that led down to a crabgrass-tufted path that ended at the pier. The other opened into the rustic kitchen, where at any moment someone was usually generously sugaring iced tea or pouring more Charles Chips into a bowl. The combined scents of homemade potato salad (heavy on the Miracle Whip) and the Bay’s briny-fetid smell would waft through my hallway hideaway as I started to doze off. The breeze that stirred the curtains was always moist and heavy and laid on the skin like a veil.

Surrendered to the heat, my sunstruck body lay limp and damp, but my ears were still awake. Before I lost consciousness, I’d hear the grownups playing Canasta on the wrap-around porch. The cottage rang with laughter as my aunt continually accused her husband of hiding black or red “treys” (3s) in his pocket. Mom, always the quietest one, would play her hand without commentary, but she was clever and often gently mopped up the rest of them. Dad, the court jester, kept everyone in stitches throughout.

Behind the slap and rustle of cards dealt and shuffled, the tinny AM radio murmured easy listening or a Washington Senators baseball game. I’d hear the metronome-like smack of the Chesapeake rising steadily against the dock pilons. The tinkle of ice in the tall, sweating iced tea glasses. Seabirds loudly disputing for crabs. The screen door’s slam (and the inevitable subsequent scolding) as my brother and cousins tore outside to play some form of ball. Sounds of the purest summer moments I’ve ever known.

Life’s more complicated now, of course. No laidback summers with my folks–they’ve gone on to their reward. That beloved waterfront property has changed hands a few times. When I visited it a few years back, the cottage had been renovated beyond all recognition.

That’s okay. On stuffy summer nights in my land-locked Northern house, I only have to close my eyes to summon those halcyon days when the soft, heavy-laden air of the Chesapeake Bay breathed over a completely relaxed sleeping child and it’s mine once more.

“He restores my soul.” Psalm 23: 3