by the sea

On Saturday, we will pack a toothbrush, a swimsuit, a week's worth of clothes, towels, sheets, and three dozen cupcakes. And we will drive out of town with the windows down and that perfect song playing on scratchy car speakers. The faint Raleigh skyline will mark the point where we veer east on a long stretch of I-40. And we'll drive and drive until the tobacco fields give way to coastal flats and secret marshes. I swear I can smell salt in the air already, but maybe anticipation is confusing my senses. When you find Highway 17, that's when you know you're close.

Every time. Every time, we drive over that bridge across the intercoastal waterway, I hold my breath. And remember so distinctly, that childhood feeling of driving the bridge straight into the sky and rounding the curve to see it for the first time: the Ocean. And the whole carload of us breathing a small sigh of relief to have finally arrived.

This time, we will all arrive at our own pace - finding our own way, one by one, to the house on the ocean that sleeps sixteen. Sixteen, because this year, the two families are converging. The convergence happens every now and then - and the best vacations happen when it does. These days, there are husbands and wives and girlfriends and grandmothers and babies to add to the mix. Which is why we need a house that sleeps sixteen.

One year, when the two families converged at the beach, we shared a quirky old house with wood floors that sloped and a pool that was beginning to show its age. But as the Mothers reminded us: We're at the beach! And we're oceanfront. And the last time we converged, we spent our first night outside on the sprawling deck, about a dozen of us watching the meteor shower. A few settled in rocking chairs. A few stretched out on the floorboards. We all watched the night sky together, star-gazing, and pointing out meteors to each other.

Here, at the beach with these ones, spend your day how you like, because no one here expects otherwise. If you want to eat Deb’s Cream Cheese Pound Cake for breakfast - by all means. If you want to take a brisk sunrise walk, have at it. If you'd rather wake up just in time for lunch (BLT's daily) - then do that. Just remember to put on sunscreen - is all we ask.

Every day, we set up camp in the sand, and everyone revolves to the beach and back. The boys (of all ages) swim until their bodies are covered in a sheen of salt and then stop to say hello, dripping wet and winded, before heading back to the house for lunch.

We read in the sun and read on the deck. We read over morning coffee and right before bed. We read all the time. Books are public property, and there is always a makeshift library - a cardboard box full of paperbacks; when you've finished a book, just return it to the box and choose the next novel. We might play cards, but that's only after a few quiet evenings to ease us into the week. And when we do, since there are so many of us, we usually play Nertz. The Dads are always paired together, and they always lose by hundreds of points. But they are the most endearing losers, and the game wouldn't be the same without them.

The Happy Hour strikes at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when we unofficially congregate on the deck to toast the ocean - still in sandy swimsuits, fresh pink sun on our cheeks. Though we rarely drink cocktails year-round, in the name of vacation, we trade in the usual glass of wine for a creative cocktail of my Mother's concoction. Tom Collins for Jen. Amaretto Sour for Carlye. Mojitos all around.

The closest we come to tracking time is Breakfast Time, Lunch Time, and Dinner Time. And we are highly traditionalist, craving and requesting only our favorite foods. Deb's pound cake. Nancy's amaretto brownies. Pineapple salsa. BLT's with avocado. Cookies by the dozen. Pounds and pounds of fresh shrimp. And this year - three dozen cupcakes.