the sea, the sea

My parents stopped by today to give us this oil painting, done by a friend of my Great-Aunt Florence in 1917. It was done in New Suffolk, Long Island, where they had a summer house. My grandmother spent a lot of time there, as her sister was 20 years older than her & a bit of a surrogate parent to her. My grandmother (and Florence’s) niece  Jeannette (now in her late 70s) emailed me this remembrance of the place a few years ago -

I thought of a time we visited your great-grandparents. While my sister, Leona and I were there, we each sat on our grandfather’s knee and he taught us tongue twisters. “Seashells by the Seashore” and “Met a Fella With a Fella in the Philippines.”  And while I was there I helped our grandmother by hanging up the clothes on the line but she didn’t interact with us very much. Even when we stayed with Aunt Florence one summer on Long Island and she shared the attic sleeping quarters with us but she never spoke to us. We would kiss her and tell her good-night but she never spoke. I was 15 at the time and Leona, 13. We did enjoy our summer on the Island though. I made beds in the annex each morning to help out and did find a girl my age to hang around with. One of the highlights of that summer was catching blue crabs and having a crab dinner all orchestrated by Uncle Bert and Aunt Florence. It was a lot of fun. We did a lot of swimming and just roaming the area. For lunch, I remember, Harlan would make these humongous sandwiches and I got in on the act. They sure were good. Speaking of Uncle Bert and Aunt Florence, everyone called Uncle Bert, Al, so one day I called him Uncle Al and Aunt Florence said I wasn’t to call him Al, only Bert. I never understood why but I complied. I just remembered one other thing we did that summer and your grandmother was there. Aunt Florence cooked for the people who stayed at her house in New Suffolk and needed a lot of eggs so she went to a place in town to buy a large amount and the owner showed Leona and I how to candle an egg. What they do is put the egg in front of a light to check the inside and make certain there are no blood spots and that the egg is not fertilized. We found that interesting.

I’m ready for some time traveling beach times, how about you?