Fourth (Clambake) Day
Today we got up at 7 AM to pick seaweed off the rocks at low tide. It was a wet, cold, slippery job, but we all enjoyed it. Then everyone ran back up the lawn to get into swimsuits, and we went for a cold early swim off Elephant Rock. I didn’t—I walked the beach with Mama and looked for seaglass. Another day I would have, but today somehow I didn’t.
We spent all day preparing for the clambake, and at last it began at 5 PM. There were clams first (which are very disgusting because you have to pull them out of their shells and just eat them), then lobsters. This was my first lobster. The way to eat lobster, I learned today, is to screw off its tail and drain the juice out, then screw off its arms the same way, then finally take the claws from the arms. The real eating is in the tail, the claws, and the arms. The body itself is mostly organs. There is also the egg sac, called the “roe,” which David and Casey dared each other to try and both did. I left it alone. Lobster meat is white, sweet, and delicious. However, I commented to David and Casey that I would “never complain about Biology dissection again, because in Biology you don’t have to eat what you dissect.” Of course, it helps that lobsters don’t smell of frumalgahyde (sp?) and don’t have their organs colored (except the liver, which is green and has a tendency to smush all over everything). Are we grossed out yet?
I enjoyed it thoroughly, right down to the lobster bib and the dish of melted butter. At the same time, I was aware of a curious sensation in my tummy. Mama asked how I liked it, and I said “Well, I like it, but my tummy is stuck between deliciousness and foreignness. It can’t decide whether or not to accept it as food, you know. I don’t want to throw up—I just don’t feel like I’m eating anything.”
This afternoon I had my first, and perhaps my only, solitary walk on the beach. It was disappointing on account of all the deep-sea fishers who had stuck their rods up in the sand just where I wanted to walk. Perhaps early tomorrow morning I will have another chance, before we leave for Nana’s house in Cape Cod.
Gathering with all our non-Christian relatives is enjoyable, but also sad. I always come away feeling like the richest person in the world, in spite of the fact that most of my relatives drive nicer cars, live nearer the sea, and have more of what is called “advantages” than we do. We don’t have all of that (we have some of it), but we do have peace, harmony, freedom from little bitternesses and selfishnesses that sour life, and, as always, we enjoy an absolutely scandalous amount of fun. Grandpa says that he’s never seen a happier family.
If I could give away these riches to my dear relatives, I would do it in a heartbeat. I ache for them to experience life as we do. But I can’t give away the things that make our lives so sweet and rich and rare, because they are the fruit of lives dedicated to God. All I can do is marvel that the poorest Christian has the richest inheritance: the whole world, in fact. Marjorie and I were talking about this today. “Do you know,” I said to her, “I think Christians own the world more than anybody else. We are closer to it, and understand it better, because we know Who it comes from and what it is for, and we are like it in that we worship God too.”
Marjorie nodded. She has just recently come from a week of missionary work in Mexico (my sixteen-year-old sister!) and told me of climbing to the top of an old Aztec temple. “There were sun worshippers and hippies who came to smoke stuff up there. They lay stretched out at the top, even though it was a cloudy day.” Marjorie, apparently, felt that she had a deeper experience of the sun than they, because she knows what it really is, and why.
The New England life can give me sun, and sea, and ships, and cool breezes and beautiful gardens, and sweet lush meadows full of dew, and strawberries, and blueberries, and clam chowder and lobsters, and white clothes and tanned skin and alertness of body and mind. It can give me magical driftwood fires and strange songs and stories and dreams. It can give me tragedy and comedy in a single breath. But I only have to look around to see that of itself it cannot give me God. I bring an awareness of Him with me, a Spirit in my pocket (or, more accurately, my soul). It is the Spirit who illuminates and transforms all this into a joyous experience, just as He does the more prosaic (in some ways) home life. Truly, truly, truly, truly, life without God is barren. There is no real beauty, and certainly no wisdom or satisfaction, where He is not.
But ah, with Him! And with those whom one loves! David and Casey are my supreme example, at present. Their young love, young in age but mature in humility and deep in God-given wisdom, which melts so beautifully into the family love that surrounds them, and gives God glory with their every breath, is gorgeous to me—purple-gold, red, airy yet substantial, luxuriant but active and vigorous, intelligent, warm, living: in a word, vibrant. I could look at them all day.
We spent all day preparing for the clambake, and at last it began at 5 PM. There were clams first (which are very disgusting because you have to pull them out of their shells and just eat them), then lobsters. This was my first lobster. The way to eat lobster, I learned today, is to screw off its tail and drain the juice out, then screw off its arms the same way, then finally take the claws from the arms. The real eating is in the tail, the claws, and the arms. The body itself is mostly organs. There is also the egg sac, called the “roe,” which David and Casey dared each other to try and both did. I left it alone. Lobster meat is white, sweet, and delicious. However, I commented to David and Casey that I would “never complain about Biology dissection again, because in Biology you don’t have to eat what you dissect.” Of course, it helps that lobsters don’t smell of frumalgahyde (sp?) and don’t have their organs colored (except the liver, which is green and has a tendency to smush all over everything). Are we grossed out yet?
I enjoyed it thoroughly, right down to the lobster bib and the dish of melted butter. At the same time, I was aware of a curious sensation in my tummy. Mama asked how I liked it, and I said “Well, I like it, but my tummy is stuck between deliciousness and foreignness. It can’t decide whether or not to accept it as food, you know. I don’t want to throw up—I just don’t feel like I’m eating anything.”
This afternoon I had my first, and perhaps my only, solitary walk on the beach. It was disappointing on account of all the deep-sea fishers who had stuck their rods up in the sand just where I wanted to walk. Perhaps early tomorrow morning I will have another chance, before we leave for Nana’s house in Cape Cod.
Gathering with all our non-Christian relatives is enjoyable, but also sad. I always come away feeling like the richest person in the world, in spite of the fact that most of my relatives drive nicer cars, live nearer the sea, and have more of what is called “advantages” than we do. We don’t have all of that (we have some of it), but we do have peace, harmony, freedom from little bitternesses and selfishnesses that sour life, and, as always, we enjoy an absolutely scandalous amount of fun. Grandpa says that he’s never seen a happier family.
If I could give away these riches to my dear relatives, I would do it in a heartbeat. I ache for them to experience life as we do. But I can’t give away the things that make our lives so sweet and rich and rare, because they are the fruit of lives dedicated to God. All I can do is marvel that the poorest Christian has the richest inheritance: the whole world, in fact. Marjorie and I were talking about this today. “Do you know,” I said to her, “I think Christians own the world more than anybody else. We are closer to it, and understand it better, because we know Who it comes from and what it is for, and we are like it in that we worship God too.”
Marjorie nodded. She has just recently come from a week of missionary work in Mexico (my sixteen-year-old sister!) and told me of climbing to the top of an old Aztec temple. “There were sun worshippers and hippies who came to smoke stuff up there. They lay stretched out at the top, even though it was a cloudy day.” Marjorie, apparently, felt that she had a deeper experience of the sun than they, because she knows what it really is, and why.
The New England life can give me sun, and sea, and ships, and cool breezes and beautiful gardens, and sweet lush meadows full of dew, and strawberries, and blueberries, and clam chowder and lobsters, and white clothes and tanned skin and alertness of body and mind. It can give me magical driftwood fires and strange songs and stories and dreams. It can give me tragedy and comedy in a single breath. But I only have to look around to see that of itself it cannot give me God. I bring an awareness of Him with me, a Spirit in my pocket (or, more accurately, my soul). It is the Spirit who illuminates and transforms all this into a joyous experience, just as He does the more prosaic (in some ways) home life. Truly, truly, truly, truly, life without God is barren. There is no real beauty, and certainly no wisdom or satisfaction, where He is not.
But ah, with Him! And with those whom one loves! David and Casey are my supreme example, at present. Their young love, young in age but mature in humility and deep in God-given wisdom, which melts so beautifully into the family love that surrounds them, and gives God glory with their every breath, is gorgeous to me—purple-gold, red, airy yet substantial, luxuriant but active and vigorous, intelligent, warm, living: in a word, vibrant. I could look at them all day.
posted by Praelucor at 9:35 PM
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