Looking back

Friday 13 February 2009

Jessy and I packed last night and we drove in to school in the Regal. Both of us were in skirts-- this is only typical. We also brought nice stuff to wear for church on Sunday though we have both admitted we are not sure we will go. Holy Innocents' has services at odd times during the off season.

After school we hurried out to the car and got on our way. The light fades fast here and so we went directly to the Ferry, not even checking on the house at Lewes, where Mommy is buried, that's even just a few blocks farther on. It was my first time driving onto the boat but I did well and Jessy was totally composed as though we had done this a hundred times before.

The boat ride is 70 minutes. It was one of the new boats and we got tea, but it was too cold to stay outside and we took a table by the windows. The wind seemed very strong in the middle of the Bay-- the water was mostly whitecaps and the boat tended to roll a lot. We were both happy to get ashore.

Of course I had never driven this way either by myself but it was not hard, and Route 9 turns into the Parkway and then it's just 65 MPH till you get there. I also had never driven this fast before, but I was very careful and not long before our exit Jessy rang Daddy and told him we were fine.

Our house in Surf City was the house we had when I was born. In fact this was to be our only home, I was to start school on the Island and to high school at Southern, and Mommy started her ice-cream parlour and the book store and we might have been very happy here. But my parents thought we should have the experience of growing up with a yard and a swimming pool and a slightly bigger house, so they built the place at Lewes and just after Jessy was born we moved there. So the house at Surf City has always been mainly a summer place for us. It is modest and old-fashioned (like everything about my parents and my family anyway) and has a lovely view of the ocean as well as up and down the beach.

The room that was always meant for Jessy and me to share is on the third floor, facing across the Island at the Bay actually. We each have an old-fashioned four-posted bed and there is a desk and wide dresser. It is an attic room with low walls and a sloping ceiling,. Round the top of the low walls, and across the end walls at the same level, is a cute wallpaper border of sailboats and seashells and dune grass that Mommy put up for us, sort of by surprise, about ten years ago. Neither of us has ever had any inclination to ever take it down. Also we have no inclination to take separate rooms-- there is a very nice guest room below our room that one of us could take, but neither of us could ever decide to be the one to not stay in this room where Mommy's wallpaper border is and so we continue to share. For now Lisa and little J.J. share the other room up here, a smaller, narrower, lower room over Mother and Daddy's room that sticks out in front towards the ocean. Some day one of them (probably Lisa) will adopt the guest room anyway, so it's just as well Jessy and I keep this one together.

Jessy and I have slowly been coming to the idea that we would like to stay here and work in Mommy's ice-cream parlour all summer. It is only what Mother (our stepmother) did when she was our nanny, the summer before and the summer after Mommy died. And she was only a year older then than I am now. I think Mommy would like us to do that, and, like Mother did, help manage the ice-cream parlour and carry on her tradition.

I have begun to believe that I would much rather do something like that than even to go to university somewhere. I could stay at this house all year and commute to Ocean County and try to figure out what I really do want to do. I only know I would miss Jessy, at least for that first year when I have done with school and she is still finishing. I suppose I could work with Daddy for that period. I know he would like that, especially because I would be home near him, which is what he really wants.

I apologise for rambling like this. I confess it is how I write when I am here-- I am less single-minded.

As soon as we got to this house we got changed into our Colonial dresses, just for fun. I have about eight different outfits, mostly handmade, of which I brought three for this weekend. In about 1750 I would have worn one not till I was sick of it but till I could not wear it any more. This weekend we're going to try to live at least in some ways like that. This afternoon I put on my light-blue skirt and bed-jacket with a plain muslin shift (undershirt like a nightgown) and stays (not exactly like a corset) under it and high socks with garters (round my calf of course) and slippers that are like ballet flats. This would have been typical for someone who was not a princess 250 years ago (and yes, I have said ALL that I have on... also typical). Jessy has on her dark-green bodice and plain muslin skirt over her shift and stays.

There are no boys to see us right now but in my experience they tend to love this gear on us girls. The bodice flatters her (I'll leave it for you to imagine why). We both feel very comfortable-- I often wish I could dress like this forever, but for now it is like a little game we are playing, like we did when Mother used to tutor us in the tea room at home in Lewes.

We made a fire in the kitchen, heated water for tea and, though we did (shamefully) cook two of the instant dinners we brought along in the microwave, we did eat by candlelight. I hooked up the laptop to the house network and by about 18.00 I was able to report to Daddy that everything was all right. Afterwards we put on our long winter coats and boots and went over the dunes to the beach. I remember happy times with Mommy, and later with our stepmother, dressing like this and skipping round the beach like we were living here 250 years ago. In the off-season there is hardly anyone here and when we were littler we didn't think that we may have looked odd to modern people. If Mommy could stroll the beach in her gorgeous handmade gowns and black stockings certainly we young girls could. I remember, the summer after she died, my nanny (as she was then) and I hiking the beach to work at the ice-cream parlour, in our long gowns and carrying our shoes, in front of everyone who was on the beach on a summer's evening in the high season. People stared, you know. But they all knew where we were going and smiled and waved as though we were celebrities. That's usually people's reaction, and it always makes me feel, even then, that something was good and right about being a girl who dressed in traditional clothes.

We saw only one person, some blocks down, with a dog. The night was going bitter. We returned to the house, set ourselves up at the kitchen table, and did our homework by candlelight till the fire faded, and then we watched DVDs ('Emma' AND 'Persuasion') till we went to bed. However I woke up at like midnight and typed in this, and I am going online to post it.

I will post more later as our 'retro' weekend proceeds.

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