The Things We Bring With Us
When I am away from the coast, in Houston, say, I imagine Galveston. It is, in the language of pop-psychology, my happy place. I have other happy places, also coastal, but they are far away and even in my fantasy, I feel the pull of realism with the gravitational pull of (imaginary) waves.
In my mind, I am always facing the sea, looking out towards the horizon. It could be late afternoon; there may be heavy-beaked pelicans dropping suddenly from the sky when they see a fish in the waves. I count them as I once counted sheep; there are bombers who fall like meteors, skimmers who swoop along the crest of fish-fat waves, and paddlers who sit heavy-bottomed in the surf. Or it might be eerily still, no birds, and thus, my fishing husband reminds me, no fish, the Gulf deserted, the waves as they break empty of visible life. It could be dawn, the sun a copper globe in the east, moving inexorably through a field of fuchsia clouds. Sometimes, in my fantasy and anticipation, it is night and there is a moon path on the water pulling with its cosmic force the naked crabs as they scuttle from their holes in the sand towards the dark sea.
Mostly I am alone on the beach. Sometimes, though, the dogs creep into my peripheral vision, first as shadows then as damp flesh and fur. Each dog comes with a particular relation to the water and the sand: Sydney headed for the surf with her one good eye on her floating rubber bone; Zuko loping deeper than the rest can go; Djinn curious but somehow a little detached from the game, Kendrick rolling in something that stinks. All of us, except Kendrick, point our faces to the gulf and into a cooling breeze from the south.
In my dreams, I am always facing away from land and the houses behind me. In my dreams, I am always facing away from whatever house we have rented—from its kitchen, large or small, beautifully or meagerly appointed, from the bedrooms with their mattresses that are soft, hard or (rarely) just right, from the living room where I, my family, and fellow travelers have distributed their things, claiming for a weekend or a month, this happy place as their own.
However long our time at the beach there are things to be faced. I mean this literally. The things we collect, from stores or our own house in Houston. The things we will place in bags, or boxes that we must empty in order to use. The things we fit snugly in the car or cars, calculating who will arrive first and therefore who will be transporting the perishables with them in the good cooler. The things we carry, one by one or two by two up the long flight of stairs to the rental house, which, like all Galveston beach houses, stands on stilts a story high. The things we distribute throughout the house: in the fridge, the pantry (if any), the cabinets, the bedrooms, the bathroom, and under the house where the fishing equipment always goes.
We add things, but we also subtract or hide them. The beach-themed tchotchkes, always ungainly and breakable, that must be removed from the surfaces once we arrive at the house. A mermaid that goes up high in a closet. The china plaque emblazoned with inspirational slogans that gets hidden in an empty box: The Waves of the Sea Get me Back to Me, I’m Done Adulting: Let’s Be Mermaids, or, more simply, I HEART the beach. And pillows, endless knobby pillows in the coral and turquoise to be found nowhere in nature, and certainly not in Galveston. Sometimes we can put our things in the things belonging to the homeowners. A large china bowl sporting life-sized octopus tentacles can serve as a receptacle for keys and wallets, or for the ever-increasing number of medicine bottles we bring with us as we age.
The things we carry with us are, I suppose—at least they should be—things we cannot live without. To put it in a less revealing and embarrassing way, they are things we know or suspect the homeowners will not provide. A really good knife. A truly non-stick pan whose surface has not been scratched away by years of egg-frying guests. Mostly we carry food and with the dried cherries, the pomegranate vinegar, the homemade homegrown pesto made and jarred in Houston, the promise of elaborate meals. I carefully transport my gluten-free pantry of flours that have been decanted from mason jars into planet-scorching plastic bags. Potato flour for thickening gumbo. Oat flour for cookies I never get it together to make, in part because the sheet pans in the drawer under the stove are worn and warped. Cornmeal for the fish that might or might not be caught. Almost all of these foodstuffs are now available in Galveston, but I still bring them. I cannot, it appears, travel to Galveston without parmesan because 20 years ago no store on the island sold the real thing. A trip to Galveston reminds me uncomfortably of my foodiness: this time, for example, I carefully packed two surprisingly heavy pints of shrub, one strawberry rhubarb and one turmeric and ginger. A month ago, I did not know that shrub existed, but now, I imagined it playing its colorful part as a non-alcoholic alternative to Aperol Spritz, the ingredients for which I also packed and carried to my car and then up the staircase.
Over the years, we have, my notes tell me, rented 15 different houses, some of them multiple times. My friend with whom we have shared almost all of them has a talent for making them homelike.
Thad can make a home out of a tiny bungalow with a bedroom half-toppling off a roof, or a mansion that looks like it dropped onto the sand from a Houston suburb. Her magic works from the East Beach to San Luis Pass and the now-eroded Treasure Island where we shared out first house. In her hands, the transformation does not take much: some wicker containers, a special mug for birding, a basket of candles, a lot of napkins, and maybe, if she remembers, a tablecloth. When we go to Galveston without her, I dutifully pack what she would have, adding to my vinegars and cheeses wicker baskets, candles, and table linens.
Each new house is an adventure. I like to climb the stairs unencumbered for my first wrestling with the house key and the first threshold crossing. Mostly, we have seen the layout of the home online, but like the dogs—and followed by them-- we must make the rounds, sniffing, assessing, settling. Yes, the porch is as advertised, overlooking the Gulf. No, there seems to be no easy path to the beach. We are thrilled when there is a desk in one of the rooms and especially when there seem to be outlets for the many different devices we bring with us. I open the cabinet drawers, hoping the owners have provided salt and pepper, crawl on the floor looking for a hand-mixer, a colander and—this is crucial—a cutting board. Later, as I cook alone or with a friend or family remember, I remind myself how much I like preparing meals in strange kitchens, searching for where the owners keep the strainer or the stew pot. On our last visit, marking my first attempt in a long time at salt and pepper shrimp, I realized there was nothing with which to crush the Szechwan peppercorns I had (of course) brought with me. No mallet, no rolling pin, no heavy pot. Banging on the peppercorns with a can of red beans (for the next day’s red beans and rice) I felt the joy of making do, of making home.
How long, I wonder, can my husband and I continue to be able to carry all these things up the stairs? In two years or ten will I be willing to plan, to decant, to load, to unload, to carry, to disperse, to reload and return the things that allow us to take home with us? How long will my sons be around to step in, to step up, to help us recreate the miracle of home on stilts? How much am I willing to work to relax? How can I, in real life as in my imagination, turn myself away from my boxes and bags of essentials to face the Gulf?