a letter from summer

By VITTI Cycling

September 24^th, 2021

When I was a child my parents rented a house every summer for our vacation week on Cape Cod. It was a small grey cottage with faded red shutters right on the beach. You opened the door and walked onto the sand and then into the water. We stayed there most times with my cousins and their parents.

We swam and played all day long, we hardly ever left the water. When night fell and the hot air of day refused to make way for the cool air of the night we jumped off the dock into the black ocean to cool off. We didn’t see sharks circling, waiting for us, but we imagined them there just the same.

All the family showed up at one point or another. Both sets of grandparents came for a day, all the uncles and aunts and all their kids and distant cousins on another day. Everyone came down at some point to spend at least a day with us to enjoy the ocean and the little shingle cottage on the beach.

There is a bike path that runs along the shoreline near the cottage to the small coastal village of Woods Hole, famous as the spot to get the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and also for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. When I was about 12 or so and wanted to get away and have some time to myself I used to race along on my Univega 10 speed a few miles on the path from the cottage to the village. The bike path ran right along the water for most of the ride, there were big rocks by the shore and deep water to dive into. I always brought a towel with me and found the biggest rock and jumped in the water to swim and float under the summer sun, drifting, eyes closed, letting the current gently move me along.

On the main road of this tiny village there is a bridge that is raised for sailboats in the marina to pass into the open ocean. It seemed that my timing was near perfect everyday to have to stop my Univega at the bridge while the man in the booth raised and lowered the road for the boats that passed underneath. Traveling through the town and weaving my bike in and out of the way of tourists walking aimlessly I finally made it to my destination, the docks near the tiny aquarium. There was an old man selling chili dogs out of a pushcart. He was there every summer. He seemed as if there was no other place he would rather be. I would buy a chili dog and then walk my bike to the end of the dock and eat it and look out at the ocean watching the waves move, traveling in my mind to all the far away places that lay across the sea.

All the cottages are mostly gone now along that stretch of beach, replaced by much bigger homes elevated to keep them out of harm's way from winter storms. The man selling hot dogs is gone. The tourists still wander about aimlessly, I still ride my bike through town and sit at the docks. I still stop to swim in the sea. The sea never changes.