Come Monday

Abby and Jenny, late February of 2022.

Entry 1   9:34 a.m.

I have diverse taste in music. Most of my baseline favorites arise from my childhood, despite my best efforts. Jimmy Buffett, which was played on the AOR stations, for inexplicable reasons since its faux Island country pop, is among the guiltiest of pleasures. 

We used to go to Westport, Grayland, and Shoalwater Bay, Jenny and I pretty routinely when we were dating and when our kids were small. Jenny and I loved to sleep at the Shoalwater Bay Inn, an old boarding house converted into an Air B&B. It's on a forlorn sand and beach grass covered spit, the ocean breeze cool and constant, the mystic smell of the sea ever redolent.  

We would beachcomb, go to the sparse and largely ignored beach-adjacent tourist trap stores (slim pickins since the 1970s when sport fishing went belly-up) Grayland, which inexplicably had shells from all over the world, but few or none from the beaches just behind the stores. We would comb through second-hand stores and find remarkable items, especially old postcards from a shop where they collected them. I have a good dozen from Seattle at the turn of the 20th century.

Being the Washington coast, it was almost invariably gray and drizzly in my memories of that time.  Our first trip away when we were dating was a cold February morning in 1991.  Jenny always had a ton of UW credit from her work as an RA, so she provisioned us well. Actually, she brought a shjt-ton of Jeno's pizza rolls.  We stayed at a place, I think, called the Ocean Spray, ironic given it was well across and set back from the road that cut it off from the beach. The place, even in 1991, was an abject dump.  It was clean, the room we had, and well provisioned with second-hand store acquired pots, pans, cups, glasses and cutlery. A thin veneer of the cheapest and very old wallpaper covered the wall.  The place was cold to the bone with the feel of the sea. The electric heat worked, but its dryness oppressive after a few minutes. We unpacked, made love, and then Jenny decided take pizza rolls.  The oven, an electric 2 burner out of a Honeymooners' episode, worked well, too well. As I was in the bathroom, the rolls began to burn. Kenny panicked, I pulled my pants up and suggested she open the window--the room was full of smoke. She did open the window, in a panic, and didn't notice there were two metal screws--likely a violation of fire code--that restricted the window, which opened out, to extend out only two inches.  The window glass shattered. I opened the front door of this small storage unit sized room to let the smoke out, turned around, looked at Jenny and we burst out laughing. We made love again in lieu of our burnt gourmet fixings. The gum I had been chewing, I stuck to the wall in unthinking haste. When we were resting afterward, I realized what I had done, I removed the gum from the wall, and it brought along about four inches of Florida shaped wallpaper scrap. We laughed and laughed. We were brought to tears again, we were having so much fun enjoying each other's company.

This all comes back to me today on a gray and overcast Seattle Spring day, 31 years later. I am remembering here, against forgetting. I am so sad I can't just look at her right now and together recall that sweet time together. 

Like the effect on me the songs of Jimmy Buffett have, I am comforted in these memories.