Nantasket Beach: A Place of Healing
Early September my grandmother, Janice Polisner, my mother’s mother passed away. My mother and I took the train up to Massachusetts for the funeral. There was a small gathering of friends and family, and yet, there was this looming sense of emptiness. I thought it would leave an emotional mark on my mind that would last for quite some time.
After the funeral my mother and I stayed at aunt Elaine’s house, my great aunt and sister to my late grandmother. Aunt Elaine a vivacious 81 year old who always has a joke up her sleeve and a smile on her face, now stared off into space, her head hung low. The life had been taken out of her eyes. In fact, we all had dead eyes after the funeral. It had marked us all.
Two days passed, life went on, or rather life moved on around us. We seemed to be stuck, fixated in our own depressed emotions. We would go through the motions, but nothing would change. Nothing inside, in our internal worlds would change. The emptiness was still looming above our heads.
On the third day I decided that I was going to buy a bicycle at a yard sale and went out and bought the newspaper. There was a yard sale advertised in Nantasket. I showed the listing to my mother and the corners of her mouth lifted into a smile. My aunt, curious at what my mother was smiling at, peered over my shoulder and grinned.
From Newton, the drive to Nantasket was about fifty minutes depending on traffic. We made it there in fifty-five minutes, driving down the same route as my great great grandfather, Eli Leibovitz. We passed through Roxbury, Dorchester, Quincy, North Weymouth, Hingham into Hull, while my aunt added commentary about how the places and people living there have changed. Different ethnic groups moved in and moved out. Indian and Thai restaurants opened up in Quincy.
During the week Monday through Friday, the Leibovitz’s would bake bread and decorate wedding cakes at Eli Leibovitz’s bakery. Saturday morning they drove up from Boston and spent their weekend relaxing on the beach with family. Eli always drove down the same route. “Do it together,” was their motto. Family was the most important to them.
We arrived at Kenburma Street in Nantasket at approximately one pm. Both my aunt and mother’s eyes came to life as we approached Manomet Ave on Kenburma. My mother exclaimed, “There it is! There’s the house! 149. It’s still standing!”
The house was three houses from the beach. The house was so close that during a thunderstorm sand would get picked up and land on their front porch. Apparently when they bought the house, 149 was seventh in line to the beach, but over the years the ocean had “crept in” and washed away the first four houses.
We were lucky enough to find a parking space right across from the house. All three of us got out of the car and stood and stared. I could feel the warmth from my mother’s eyes as she looked on in awe at the house. This was the large brown house where my mother had spent so many summers of her childhood. My mother walked around the house and smiled, “everything is the same, except for the porch that would extend all around the house. I can almost see Anna, sitting on the porch waving and smiling.”
Anna was Eli’s wife, my mother’s grandmother, and my great grandmother of whom I am named after. The whole family would stay in the house at one time, and from what I heard it was a lot of fun, there was always something going on. As soon as they woke up they would go down to the beach. The kids would run around build sandcastles and go swimming while the parents and grandparents would sit, relax, and chat. Sometimes the family would have a picnic on the beach.
We must have been staring a long time because the next-door neighbor was glaring suspiciously at us.
My mother seeing the neighbor glaring at us, smiled and said, “My family owned this place a long time ago. I used to play here when I was little.” The neighbor’s frown changed to a smile and said “Oh! How wonderful,” and went back into her house.
After taking several photographs of the house with our phones we went onto the beach. There were all kinds of families, large and small sitting on the beach. Some families were having picnics, building sandcastles with their kids, sunbathing, reading books, or talking. There was even one family who brought a large radio to the beach and were listening to the baseball game.
''courtesy of www.city-data.com"
Nantasket is called a “summer colony” because its busiest time is in the summer. In fact there is an annual “Endless Summer Waterfront Festival” every September. The name “endless summer” evokes lazy feelings and brings to mind leisure activities such as lounging in the sun. By having a festival with the name of “endless summer” in Nantasket, it is indirectly calling Nantasket a paradise or a place of relaxation. Bostonians flock to Nantasket beach on the weekends to get out of the city.
The whole town is shaped around the beach both physically and thematically. Stores, restaurants, and houses face towards the beach. Restaurants such as Beach Fire, the Red Parrot, Daddy’s Beach Club, Jo’s Nautical Bar, and Lobster Expressserve seafood and had drinks such as the beach martini. Stores sell bathing suits, cover-ups, and waterproof bags. There is even a music performance space called the Aquarion Sound Stage, a name that references the ocean’s water.
(courtesy of beachfirehull.com)
While my aunt and mother talked about old times, and relived old memories, I went and explored the beach. The ocean water was cool and refreshing after spending an hour in the car. The salty smell of the ocean and the soft sand in between my toes calmed me. My breathing became slower, more regular, and fuller. My mind cleared, distracting thoughts faded away, and I was able to focus. The beach was a place to relax, a paradise away from the stressful workplace. I felt free and could spread out both physically and mentally, something I could not do in a small dark room in a busy city. Just as Yi-Fu Tuan described the relationship between spaciousness and freedom in his book Space and Place, “spaciousness is closely associated with the sense of being free. Freedom implies space; it means having the power and enough room in which to act.” (Tuan: 2005, 52)
I found my aunt and mother where I had left them, laughing and talking about old times. Hearing the stories and seeing where they happened, allowed me to experience their Nantasket, and in turn their Nantasket became apart of mine. And even though the house was not physically ours, it still felt like it was ours.
It was starting to get late and I could hear my stomach rumble. My mother heard my stomach and laughed. We left the beach, walked down four blocks and found a wonderful seafood restaurant right on the beach overlooking the water called Beach Fire. We sat outside and felt like we were in a European paradise. The foliage and the rocky hills did not feel like Massachusetts. There was a natural looking fire pit that to our surprise was electric. We found this out when it suddenly turned on at eight pm. Almost all of the fish on the menu were wild caught and local. The dinner special that night was lobster. My aunt ordered the sea bass, while my mother and I indulged, let ourselves go, and got lobsters.
By this time it was dark and all the families except for a few had gone home to eat dinner. Young couples were taking walks up and down the beach. Some of them were even holding hands. There were also a lot of older couples out and about stargazing. There was a full moon tonight.
At the end of dinner I mentioned I had seen a beautiful carousel when we first got to Nantasket, and asked if anyone wanted to go for a ride? To my delight, both my mother and my great aunt wanted to go for a ride. We walked to the carousel and were surprised to hear that it was 84 years old. In fact, my great aunt remembers vaguely riding it on a date when she was fourteen years old. My mother also remembered riding it vaguely when she was four years old.
The beautiful women dressed in Grecian clothing, carriages, and horses present an “ideal” and suggest the idea of a paradise.
(courtesy of http://www.paragoncarousel.com/our-history/)
This carousel known as the Paragon Carousel is the last remaining remnant of Paragon Park, an amusement park built by the ocean in 1928. Paragon Park was closed and sold in 1984. Everything except for the Carousel was demolished and made into condominiums. The Carousel was then sold and bought two more times and is now safely under the protection and control of a nonprofit organization called The Friends of the Paragon Carousel, Inc.
By the time the ride ended my mother, great aunt, and I all had giant smiles on our faces. We left feeling like we were walking on air. The emptiness that the funeral had imprinted on us, was now filled, or replaced with the warmth of today’s healing experiences.
References:
Bergan, William M.; 1968. Old Nantasket. Boston, Mass: Spaulding-Moss.
The Committee For the Preservation of Hull’s History; 1999. Hull and Nantasket Beach. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing.
<http://www.paragoncarousel.com/our-history/>
Tuan, Yi-Fu; 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
