Day 278, Year 10: A Day of Firsts
Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Weather: Partly Cloudy; Temp in the 80’s F
Location: Quissett Harbor, Falmouth, MA
We spent our morning at Wood Neck, on the beach side and then on the marsh side, and had a number of firsts. Mark attended a Buzzards Bay Coalition Itty Bitty Explorers adventure on the beach with the boys while I went to an annual doctor appointment. All three boys enjoyed the experience and just as they were finishing up, I got back. It was high tide and the marsh side of Wood Neck was a bit flooded with water, so all three boys decided they wanted to ‘shoot the rapids’. As the water floods out of Little Sippewissett Marsh and heads out into Buzzards Bay, it provides a great water ride on boogie boards or floats of any sort. As you approach the Bay, the water gets shallow and rumbles over rocks, making it looks like rapids. This approach to the Bay is known as Lazy River, but there was nothing lazy about it this morning. The water was rushing out and provided perfect conditions for the boys to hold on to their boogie boards and head swiftly out to sea. I was on the sea side and Granddad on the inside helping Ollie get on this board and head out for the ride. Jonah and Sam needed no help, and all three boys loved the experience. Sam had a snorkel mask with him and kept his face down in the water as he rode the flood tide. This was his very first drift dive and he loved it. After an hour of riding the tide, we forged our way inland to play in the marsh. Here there were a couple of additional firsts. Jonah, who is always very tentative around water, decided he should jump off the bank and do cannonballs into the water. He had a ball. Sam decided he should do back flips in the water. He was successful at this which was another first. And he spent more time underwater checking out the bottom than he did above water. He has become a free diver. Then there was Ollie who is convinced he can swim in water over his head, but who cannot really swim. But he braved the deeper water without any buoyancy support and held his own. I was always right there, but I never needed to rescue him. All three boys are making all kinds of strides toward becoming self-sufficient swimmers.
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| 150715 Day 278 Cape Cod, USA–Woodneck |
When we got out of the water to eat lunch there were hungry horse flies biting at our legs. So we left Wood Neck and went to the hill overlooking Water Street in Woods Hole to have lunch. This hillside is right between the building where Jed works and the one where Heather works, so the boys have been here many times for lunch and play. We ate lunch, walked Sam to the School of Science, and then took off for home. Sam had one more first after his class. Heather had an on-air interview and couldn’t be there to pick him up. So on the way to class, we rehearsed his solo walk back to Heather’s office. He has done it so many times with someone, that it was no big deal for him, but it was another first. Mark and I told him that when we were his age, we both walked a mile to and from school each day with no adult chaperone. He wanted to know why kids can’t do that today. I decided that explaining to him that today’s world is more complicated for kids than it was back in the 40’s and 50’s would not make sense to him, so I more or less avoided the question. But it is true that kids today have much less freedom of movement than we did when we were kids. Thankfully, Woods Hole is still one of the safe places in the world.
