Heading down to the beach house...

My favorite spring ritual is getting the beach house ready for the summer. There isn't a lot to do inside. We have a cleaning lady who keeps it clean throughout the year. We actually don't ever close it up. Winter is beautiful there too!

The "spring readiness" involves yard work and dock work. It involves making sure that the boats are ready for a season of play and fishing. It's raking up the goose poop from all over the yard, so that it isn't tracked into the house leaving slimy green messes all over.

It is my least favorite job, that is hand picking all of the leaves out of the landscape bushes, that I avoid. Waiting until the last minute, I'm always hoping that someone else will do it, but soon I realize that they won't. Even that is a tradition passed on from my Mother-in-law. She taught me how to do it all. The "beach house readiness" is a right of passage that I accept with honor!

I have stored all of the memories of helping to do it, so that now I can do it with love myself.

I grumbled under my breath back then as the jobs were rattled off, not realizing what a joy it would become in the years to come.

It's the anticipation of sun drenched days, of lounging on the dock with a good book or reading the Sunday New York Times with the gentle rocking of the dock, the gathering of the younger generation that the sun brings.

Washing all of the towels, bed linens and blankets, washing the throw rugs and curtains and tossing expired dry goods from the pantry closet all make the springtime ritual wonderful. The expectation of fun days and nights with our family and our friends is nearing. You can almost smell the sunscreen and lotion.

Cleaning out the garage, and organizing the fishing gear is not my job. Neither is sanding and repainting the row boat and scheduling the dock work. Those tasks are lovingly repeated yearly by the Lord of the beach house, first Old Gramps, then Grampa, and now my husband, the soon to be Grampa. The beach house is coming to life again!