The flip side of owning a beach house

This self-portrait that my mother painted in oils best describes the quintessential bliss of a summer's day at the beach – blue skies, gentle winds, endless sunshine.

It hangs in the living room of the summer house, and it is the stuff of dreams.

But the tranquility it exhibits belies the calamities that have happened here since my parents bought the land 50 years ago:

One evening around dusk with calm seas, my husband took my brother fishing in his boat. As they trawled, the rope from a lobster pot became entangled around the leg of the motor. Hours later, we called the Coast Guard. We cried and we prayed. After countless attempts diving under the boat with a knife in dark waters, my brother cut them free. The Tiverton Water Police towed them in around midnight.

Our water supply was tainted by Temik, a pesticide used in the potato field abutting our property.

Hurricane Bob tore down the huge maple tree in front of the summer house, missing the structure by a few feet.

A cloudless Sunday afternoon, my brother took my father and son on his sailboat. Out of the blue, a violent thunderstorm forced them to get to land. We called the Coast Guard. We cried and we prayed. Many hours later, they were found and towed in.

I stopped at a bookstore near the summer house and was bitten by a huge rabbit named Eliot, the patron’s pet. I sat on the couch in the beach house while the gash in my leg with telltale teeth marks throbbed. I got a tetanus shot.

Climbing on the roof of the summer house to remove the old antenna, my brother disturbed a bee hive. He climbed down the rungs of the ladder in record speed but not without incurring their wrath with numerous stings on his arms and legs.

Hurricane Irene tore down the huge maple tree in the back yard, missing the shed by a few feet.

My son was cooking on the grill when it malfunctioned. Along with the meat, his eyebrows and arm hair were singed.

My father took my brother's sailboat out on the bay while my mother played with my children on shore. After scouring the coastline for hours, we saw my father floating down the river on the hull of the sailboat. He had pulled up the centerboard, and it flipped. A kind boater towed him to shore.

One whole season we were terrorized by a pesky skunk who took up residence on our property.

My mother helped my father carry the heavy picnic table out of the shed. Inadvertently, he let go of the weight, breaking my mother’s wrist.

In addition, there have been infestations of rodents; countless mosquito, tick and dog bites; wasps in the well house; hornets in the washing machine hose; broken pipes; toilet overflows; ceiling cave-ins; bicycle falls; sunburns; and too many other mishaps to mention.

Yet, despite it all, one of the best things my parents ever did for us was to buy this little piece of land by the sea.

The calm before the storm

Those who live by the sea have the deepest respect for their fickle neighbor. They cherish the calm demeanor and tranquility of their fair weather friend, but they also know when it is agitated, slamming surf and kicking up sand, it is time to get to higher ground.

Many years ago, I met an elderly gentleman, an officer in the Coast Guard Auxiliary who assisted the Coast Guard on weekend patrols on Mount Hope Bay and the Sakonnet River.

In the 1930s, his family converted a small fisherman’s shack near Sakonnet Point in Little Compton into a summer cottage.

Coming of age there, he often sailed around the lighthouse or paddled his canoe up and down the coast, edging his way around the many boats in the fishing fleet.

He worked at the Fo’c’s’le, a popular seaside tourist spot, opening quahogs, shelling lobsters and peeling potatoes.

Then the 1938 Hurricane struck without warning.

“We lost the house, and I almost lost my father,” he told me. “He was washed out to sea from Sakonnet Point all the way down to Taylor’s Lane. He watched five people drown, and he couldn’t save them. He had cracked ribs and was bruised all over, but he came out alive.”

Fifty homes in his Sakonnet Point neighborhood were destroyed.

When my parents bought land near Fogland Beach in Tiverton in the winter of 1969, they learned that their neighbor’s cottage had been beachfront property. Fifteen years earlier, Hurricane Carol had dragged it to its current site, three streets from the water’s edge.

In 1991, Hurricane Bob made landfall over Newport. When the water receded, one of the rental cottages along our beach had been torn from its foundation and set down in the middle of the salt marsh.

Last year, on the day before the arrival of Hurricane Irene, we secured the summer house and boat the best we could and flipped the picnic table. Some of our neighbors had boarded up their windows, and most of the residents had already evacuated. When we drove away, we understood the very real possibility that upon our return, everything might be gone: the summer house destroyed and our yard underwater.

Here we go again.

This morning under sunny skies, with no wind and unseasonable warmth just a few days before November, my husband and I repeated the drill.  

An unprecedented fluke of nature, Hurricane Sandy, a Category 1 hurricane embedded in a nor’easter, is barreling up the coastline.

God help us.  

The calm after the storm

Rising at the crack of dawn, my husband kisses me goodbye before heading out the door to go fishing. I awake hours later with sunshine streaming through the windows.

It is the last weekend at the summer house before the unofficial end of summer, and it is blissful.

I have a long list of things to do: walk the beach slowly, look for sea glass, sit on a boulder, draw in the sand, watch the tidal flush in the estuary, read under the maple tree, stop and smell the flowers …

What a difference a year makes.

This morning Tropical Storm Isaac swept across Haiti and a hurricane warning is in effect for the west coast of Florida.

We know what they are going through.

A year ago on the day before the arrival of Hurricane Irene, my husband and I drove to Rhode Island with heavy hearts. We anchored our boat to the summer house, flipped the picnic table, and secured all my parents’ belongings. My mother left the place in tears.

Some of our neighbors had boarded up their windows, and most of the residents had evacuated.

When we drove away, we understood the very real possibility that upon our return everything might be gone: the beach house destroyed and our yard underwater.

Back at our Massachusetts’ home in the deep woods, we had other worries. Our house sits across from a pond and is surrounded by 100-foot pine trees.

My husband and I went to church on that Sunday morning while the wind whistled and the rain splattered the stained-glass windows.

Hurricane Irene was barreling up our coastline. God help us.

Back at home, we heard the sounds of the wind ripping through the woods, felling limbs and tossing them everywhere.

It wasn’t long before we learned that a tree had fallen on our next-door neighbor’s home shattering their skylight. A short way up the street, a massive tree had toppled taking with it all the power, cable and telephone lines.

I called my parents. The apple tree that had graced their front yard ever since they bought the property in 1947 had just split in half.

As soon as the tropical storm passed, my son drove to Tiverton. Unbelievably, the summer house had survived intact.

A year later, Irene’s fury is a distant memory. The Sakonnet River lightly taps the shore while gentle winds blow.

I look at my list – so much to do, so little time.