By the Sea, by the Sea
My earliest exposure to the ocean, if the water of Long Island Sound can be called ocean, probably came before I was five. I see my young self hand in hand with Grandpa Chase, early evening, summer, walking along a sea wall beside Knollwood Beach in Connecticut, sand and tidal waters to one side, weathered beach cottages, garden reflecting balls, and flagpoles to the other. Pure delight.
When I was ages seven, eight, nine, and ten, my family rented a plainspoken cottage at Old Kelsey Point in Westbrook, Connecticut. Those summer weeks by the sea established in me a lifelong set point of proximity to the ocean.
For many years, living just minutes from the ocean as we have for decades, Dave and I have made it our practice to head out for picnics in settings beside the water every single evening from mid-June through mid-September. Even when we were both working to the fullest extent at our respective jobs, our internal mindset was that we owned and lived in a cottage by the sea all summer every summer. That mindset endures! So, when you look at my journal page below, please know that that peach-colored cottage with salty window panes is ‘our‘ cottage, those clothes drying in the onshore breeze are ‘our’ clothes, that picket fence needing a fresh coat of paint is ‘our’ picket fence.
8 x 8″; watercolor, acrylic gesso, water-soluble pencil, and water-soluble pastel
on journal page
2024
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4 responses to “By the Sea, by the Sea”
How lucky of you to have had those childhood experiences by the sea. Growing up in the middle of the country….I only came to the sea as an adult. And there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
I’ve known about your summer picnics…but I don’t think I fully appreciated that you actually make your way to the water every…single…day! What a wonderful and magical daily practice! And what a gift for your marriage.
I’m enchanted with your cottage window….your clothes on the clothesline….and your picket fence by the sea.
MaryAnn, thanks for visiting me at my cottage! And thanks for appreciating the every … single … day element of Dave’s and my summer picnics. Those picnics-plus-walks are for sure a magical daily practice and a gift for our marriage (especially since we each make our own picnics!)—as soon as we’re by the water we are ‘transported.’ The tasks and responsibilities of the day fall away, and we truly feel as though we live on the water all summer.
As a writer named Barbara Holland states, “Summer is cumulative and needs to pile up, attain a certain mass, at which point the days stop being days and melt together to become a place, a self-contained, motionless country wholly set apart from time and containing within its boundaries all summers past and future.” Yup.
Yay! So happy this painting PUT YOU THERE BY THE SEA! We’re happy to have you here hanging out with us, Lola!
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