Vacation in Amagansett

Tuesday 3 September 2013

The drive to Amagansett, which should have been a smidge shorter than the drive to Montauk, took two and a half hours.  OK, I stopped briefly at the grocery store, but the 2-lane highway was backed up for miles until I reached East Hampton, then it all broke up. As I got closer to the end of the Long Island Expressway, the storm clouds built up to the east.  As long as I was driving east, I drove toward the storm.  By the time I got out to Amagansett, though, the storm had passed, leaving several inches’ worth of puddles behind.

Didn’t arrive at Driftwood on the Ocean (Montauk Highway, next to the Hither Hills State Park) until almost 4, unpacked a bit so I could get into the beautiful pool.  It’s open 9-7 barring stormy (that is, lightning) weather.  After swimming gently for half an hour (no exercise in far too long, so I started slow), I walked out to the beach.  Rough surf, just beach as far as you could see east and west.  I found myself a bit tired, but pushed on.  On the way back from the beach, I stopped in the office to ask if any of the eating places were in walking distance.  Three:  Lobster Roll (a.k.a. “Lunch”), Cyril’s Fish House, and the Crab Shack. 

view of the ocean dunes from my patio

room with ceiling fan and patio

      

After showering me and rinsing the bathing suit (1 of 3), I hung the suit in the shower and headed out.  It was dark twilight by then, and I walked down the road from the resort toward Montauk Highway.  To my right was the pool, then some separate buildings, perhaps cottages (what an American would call a cottage, not a Brit), all shielded by the shrubbery and trees of the dunes.   

path to the beach

In the twilight I saw a deer.  A buck, but not terribly big.  He watched me, and I motioned him – all right, I told him, to go back into the park.  Don’t go toward the road.  I walked forward, watching him, and he walked parallel, watching me, bushes between us.  Then I saw the doe.  I gave her the same instructions, don’t go toward the road.  Twilight and dawn are prime times for deer getting hit by cars.  She seemed spooked and leapt into the brush.  He kept watching me.  He walked between the bushes and the cottage, watching me.  I walked along, keeping an eye out for cars.  One drove by me, but there were no awful sounds afterward.

Cyril’s Fish House is just across Montauk Highway, so I stepped around the massive puddles from the afternoon’s storm and ran across the highway to eat.  Bob Marley sang all the while.  Children marveled at the mosaic fish scenes on the walls. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to sleep.  Pains, a bit of nausea – so glad I brought that can of ginger ale that came with a Chinese restaurant order.  I had left the curtains slightly open, wanting the dawn to wake me.  Well it did.  I got up and looked to the east, and the red band lightening the sky was beautiful. 

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Woke much later than planned.  Put the “do not disturb” sign out.  I need nothing.  My arms vaguely achey, as is my neck, as if I slept badly.  Which I did. 

The patio is raised one story, and concrete, with concrete molded fencing and wood fencing between the rooms.  If I stand at the edge and look south east, I can see the ocean, just.  For a while, in the wee small hours, I could hear the ocean as the traffic diminished.  But mostly I hear traffic, the railroad’s horn, and the creatures in the preserve.  In the night.  Beautiful place, but I’d rather hear the ocean.

After a walk on the shore did nothing to alleviate the stress brought on by some aggravating phone calls, I went to Montauk.  I made my annual stop at the Montauk Bookstore, bought Shirley Jackson’s first published novel, and picked up a few more things (of course) at the IGA.  The drive made me feel better.  Ate at home.  Love my back patio and the table.  It’s all wrought iron, the seat cushions firm but soft, and I put one on the back as well.  Spent much time there.

sunset over the pool and the highway

Thursday 5 September 2013. 

I can’t seem to get myself down to the pool for “adult hour” between 9 and 10.  Later morning, I swam for a bit.  Annoying children who didn’t belong on the deep end.  I remember loving to jump into the water, but that boy with the green goggles never let go of the ladder or the side wall, so he clearly was too afraid to be in the deep water, but his adult was on the shallow end of the pool.

sun paints dune and treetops gold as it sets

In mid afternoon I took a walk along shore, picked up some trash rather than see it washed out to say. Tide was coming in, and someone was going to lose primary-colored earth-moving machine toys.  Sat for a while and stared from a lounge chair piled up near the entrance.  Then at dinnertime swam in the pool.  Decided not to walk the mile or so to Lobster Roll but drive, and went carefully at twilight (when the deer might be out again).  Didn’t see them, did see a rabbit. 

Again woke multiple times in the night, had even closed the patio door in prep for a chilly forecast.  Dreamt, I presume – someone walked along the walkway of front doors, shouting that we should find the button on the blanket and push it and it would get warmer.  I found small pearl sized buttons along the edge of the blanket, pushed one, and it was warmer.  Definitely a dream.  Not a dream was my damn phone.  It kept saying “Verizon Wireless.”  Several seconds would pass, and then something about “leaving service area.”  At least once an hour, as if the hotel were moving.  The hotel didn’t move.  At 3 in the morning I turned off the phone, and therefore my alarms.  Dream-filled sleep.

Friday 6 September 2013

Friday, last full day.  It’s chilly, delightfully. Bright sun on pool, kids there, I can’t go in just now but should go down there and just scribble what they say.  Little girl with a harsh voice, the harridan cried, Emily, you said you’d jump, JUMP!  Emily says she’s going to, harsh girl shouts VIDEO IT VIDEO IT to her mother, who foolishly says OK, but Emily won’t jump despite the harsh girl’s bullying.  She does later. 

i do love my patio

Saturday 7 September 2013

Woke a little after 8 from a dream in which all the cat food dishes were totally empty. 

It’s very cold this morning, so tough to take advantage of “Adult Hour” in the pool.  The weekend brought rowdies, the kind who do 4 to a room.  They were rowdy up to midnight last night and they’re rowdy now.  Luckily there’s some barrier between their patio and mine, but still.  Mostly packed, just want to take a plunge in the pool.  As soon as I put on some clothes, I can start bringing things down.  I can walk along the beach even after I’ve checked out, I know where the bathroom is, so I can relax. 

 

Note for next time – Although checkout time is 11 a.m., when I checked out at 10:55, she said I didn’t have to leave.  That I could use the pool, go to the ocean, whatever, and just use the shower and bathrooms in the Recreation room, pretty much under my hotel room.  So next time, I should plan on going home much later.  

Room 62 was lovely, but far from the water, so I heard the highway, not the ocean until the wee small hours when I should be asleep.  Next time – a room numbered in low 50s would be closer to ocean, and still have private patio overlooking the ocean dunes.   

A less than relaxing time, but beautiful.

~ Molly Matera, back home, happy to see the cats, otherwise miss jumping in that pool every day….

Inglorious Summer… Ends

Moon over Montauk

It’s been a weird couple weeks.  Well, month. 

In August, I learned of three deaths.  Not the usual celebrity deaths of people we don’t actually know and who are way older than my friends and myself.  No.  Closer.  First an old friend, teacher, mentor.  He’d been ill — various — for some time, so the email from his grown children wasn’t a surprise, exactly.  More like, I was due to give Robert a call, and now I’m too late.

The next day, my friend Horvendile informed me of the death of a newer friend, ill for a shorter period of time.  A lovely man, a man of the theatre and the world.  A mentor to many.  I was glad to have had him in my life, albeit for too short a time. 

That weekend I learned of my third:  a woman I’d worked with a quarter century ago, when I still worked in juvenile publishing.  She and I shared a room at my first and only science fiction convention, outside Philadelphia, decades ago.  She gave me freelance work reading and reporting on over-the-transom manuscripts.  Josepha had friends throughout the publishing industry, in various genres, and my long-ago memories of her were good ones.  That she’s gone is shocking. 

That’s how August ended.  I started September by going on vacation to my favorite spot out in Montauk.  Favorite is a silly word — it implies a vast knowledge of spots, people, books, whatever, from which to choose.  I haven’t been so many places that the Atlantic Terrace in Montauk being my favorite for a relaxing, totally laid back vacation is meaningful or measurable.  Nonetheless, it was the right place at the right time for me this year.

Tuesday, 4 September

It had rained hard as I drove east on the LIE, visibility distressingly low. My audio-book purchase was validated.  Allyson Ryan’s recording of a charming children’s book (Suddenly Supernatural by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel) was a comfort, if it did pull my attention from the dull road on occasion! The storm lessened to nothing as I turned off the expressway, onto Suffolk 111 south down to Montauk 27. 

Traffic was light after the Labor Day weekend, and I made good time until I stopped at “Lunch” (a.k.a. Lobster Roll restaurant ) between Amagansett and Montauk and had my first fish meal of vacation.  It’s such a comfortable place, with music of my youth playing not too loud, no one rushing me over my lobster roll and slaw and good fries. 

I had requested the ocean-facing room with the most light — a window in the wall facing southwest (ish) in addition to the balcony looking out on the ocean.  I could lie on the bed and see a show of seagulls swooping and gliding outside that window, coming in low, then veering south or upward at the last moment.  Missing my cats, at least I could watch the gulls, and listen to their calls outside between poundings of the surf onto the shore.  They would have been fascinated by the roar of the surf — Wilbur would be under the bed, of course, but eventually he’d stand with his hind feet on the dresser and peer out the side window. 

Wednesday 5 September

I woke two hours after hitting the snooze.  I heard a cat breathing around me, but no weight rolled onto my head as she settled.  I heard a cat crying outside, then realized it was a child screching as the waves bounded up the shore toward her.  She ran behind her father, who carried another child on his back.  Montauk.

The ocean was rough, moving inexorably up the shore.  Perhaps that’s why I dreamt of being out there, happily diving through one large wave only to be caught by the next that followed close upon.

People are in the pool, adults and children, children taken out of school during the first week so they could go on vacation.  Odd.  To me.  The wind was hearty but warm.  The cloud cover was heavy, the outcropping to the southeast a blur.  A patch of sun a quarter mile out on the surface of the sea looked manmade. 

A young fellow flew a kite, with intensity.  A gull opposite him flapped violently, fighting the wind before it could settle where it chose among its cohorts.  I’d thought for a moment the man was working a kite that looked like a gull landing, so in synch were their actions.

A boxer pup evaded his human’s camera and watched the kite flyer, who landed his black and red and purple kite precisely.  It was not shaped like a gray gull.  A female in a pink hoodie walked toward the water with the dog running to keep up with her on its stubby little legs.  When she stopped reading her phone, she tried to take a picture.  To the dog, it must have seemed its human was not only looking at him but pointing her toy at him, that toy that takes all her attention away from him, so he walked right to her, spoiling her shot.  Which makes me think of Dashiell, dead 15 years at least, who always did the same thing.  Sweet cat that he was, he’d walk right to me, ruining the focus. 

When I finally went for a walk to town, I was in the wrong shoes.  My left heel had started bothering me over the weekend — for "bothered," read "hurt."  Stretching it hadn’t helped yet.  Nor did Dr. Scholl’s Comfort Fit Orthotic Inserts.  It started to rain on my way back, and I took off my shoes to walk along the shore toward the east.  Ah.  The only time my heel didn’t hurt was when it sank into the sand.

The fog made the distance fuzzy.  There was a new ridge of sand on the beach; the storms must have been worse out here than in the boroughs.  A spot I walk by each visit, and photograph each visit, was dry, but different.  It’s been wearing down gradually for years, with run-off from storms carving a slope into the beach itself.  It appears to have fallen down aggressively since last time I was here.  That was just 11 months ago.  I must compare the photos. 

Thursday 6 September

I walked to the post office to mail my postcards to friends’ children, then couldn’t keep away from Montauk’s tiny bookstore.  With the clear exception of the front bay window, the small space is lined with shelves, from floor to ceiling, back to front.  I always stop by here and always find something I must have, despite the books already in my hotel room (not to mention my home).  I walked back past what used to be Nick’s and is now Sloppy Tuna.  Instead of gourmet meals of Nick’s (which were rich and delicious), simpler fare is now offered there, and I went back in the evening for a light meal and a drink overlooking the sea.  Nicely redone interiors and exterior, great view as the sun sets behind the diners and twilight falls onto the sea — but the food was nothing special. 

8 September

On my last night I had a nice meal at Shagwong.  On my last morning, I swam in the pool for half an hour or so before heading home.  Television news said a storm was heading in.  When I stopped in Amagansett at the farmer’s market, my friend called to tell me there were tornado warnings.  The drive home was windy but without precipitation — the tornados touched down on the south shore of Queens, nowhere near me.  Lucky again.

12 September

Settling back in to real life.  Back to work, back to laundry, back to cooking and doing my own vacuuming. 

Last night, I read an article — well, not so much an article as an opinion piece, I suppose — in the New Yorker that basically told me that I, as a woman who is not a mom, am extraneous.  Swell.  There’s a rude gesture I could make to any society that labels me “extraneous.”  My vacation relaxation is now officially gone.  Summer is over.  Moving on to the winter of my discontent, it’s time to immerse myself in the new theatre season so as to avoid my immaterial, inessential inner thoughts.

~ Molly Matera, signing off.  Extraneously.

Vacation + Stress

My poor old cat cannot stay home alone for four days, now that he gets meds twice a day (not to mention he's not on his best behavior anymore. It's not that he doesn't know where the litter box is -- he's just inconsistent).

Meanwhile, I needs must get away and be irresponsible for four or five days. So I did it. My stomach clenches as I write that. I brought him to his vet's "Cat Condos," where no dogs abide, and nice people will look after him. Away from home. Awful. Vet handed me the tissue box when I started crying -- he made me feel even guiltier than I already did, telling me the cat's mainstays are his humans and his place, and there I was taking both away. My boy stared at me as the vet carried him away from me. He knew something was up. But really, another 'vacation' at home just wasn't going to do it for me.

I drove out to Montauk in two hours. Half an hour less than past times, despite the slower traffic at lane closures on the LIE. I didn't pass people, they passed me, but I must have been going mighty fast. In my old Dodge, I'd have noticed the noise went I went over 35. In the Toyota, I find myself suddenly going 70. And more. I'd love to slow down, but on the LIE that's not an option.

I always assume it'll storm when I'm out in Montauk, so I'm sure to get a room with a view of the ocean. This week's room wasn't my best choice -- I saved a little money, but the view is partially blocked. No matter, it's not pouring. It's gorgeous. This little efficiency will do me just fine.

When I arrived yesterday the pool was extremely inviting. I swam there, I walked along the beach and into the surf, I went back into the pool. Slept like a log last night. Now I'm waiting the appropriate amount of time before I go swimming again, since I've had my oatmeal and I'm quite full. And need to get out to the stores to pick up olive oil (to stir fry the chicken I brought from home which would not have survived another 4-5 days in the fridge) and bread (for the cheese I brought from home, ditto), and stamps and postcards to various children.

There are few things more soothing and beautiful to me than the sound of the surf. Partial view or not, that I can hear just fine.