We have been back for about a week from the 2026 annual family beach week. Beach week is a meaningful tradition that has been part of our family for many years. When our five children were small we co-owned a condo at Sea Colony on the Delaware shore with Pete and Louise and their four girls. We alternated the weeks or weekends that we spent at the beach condo. An added blessing was that my mother and her twin sister, Marg, and her husband, Jim, had moved down from New York and also owned a condo in the same building. In addition they had a condo with my mother in Northern Virginia but they all spent as much time at Bethany Beach as they could. Their beach presence, when we were there, was a gift we did not take lightly.

The beach condo building had an excellent and very popular indoor swimming pool. When the weather dictated that it was not a good day for ocean swimming, the twins got their exercise in the indoor pool. They were both excellent swimmers. The life guard pool routine was to call an adult break on the hour. You had to be at least 16 to stay in the water during adult break. The life guards were kind of casual about calling these breaks but not when Mom and Aunt Marg were present. Breaks were always called. It was a 10 – 15 minute hourly gift of real swimming that the twins appreciated as did others who met the age requirements. The twins never asked for this special treatment but they sure appreciated it.

With the passage of time – and when Mom and Aunt Marg and Uncle Jim were no longer with us, Pete and Louise moved to their condo and we stayed in the condo that we had shared with them. When work schedules and school schedules and extra – curricular activities permitted, we made many trips to Sea Colony both in season and out of season. When we were living in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, depending on traffic, the trip took about three hours. The children were good travelers and the time went by fast. One of our most favorite car games to play was Botticelli. Don’t know where the game came from but it sure was a favorite. The one who was ‘it” picked a person for us to guess – that person could be either living or deceased, from any walk of life, at least as famous as the painter Botticelli. The others had only a total of twenty questions they could ask to solve the mystery. Some times it was solved sometimes not. If not, then the puzzle master got another turn. We played other car games but definitely Botticelli was a big favorite.

In the 1980’s- the college years for our children- and when we had three in college at the same time and when beach construction had adversely affected the ocean flow and the quality of wave riding which was and is so important to our family, we decided to sell our unit at Sea Colony. The children were exploring various life pathways. It was difficult to come up with more than a week’s time that we could all spend together at the beach.

In searching for the perfect spot for our beach week, post Sea Colony, we experimented with different ocean beach locations from the Jersey shore to the Virginia beaches finally narrowing in on the Jersey shore and Diamond Beach and Ocean Grove. This year there were 26 of us at Diamond Beach. With our size we long ago gave up trying to be in one house for Beach Week. And we no longer take turns hosting at one time the whole gang for a beach dinner together. We do gather together during the day on the beach and at night for talent night and for ice cream.

Talent night is very special. There is no pressure to perform but there is great participation. With guitar playing, group singing, solos, duets, original music, etc. the time just flies by. With my lack of musicality, unlike my very blessed musical husband, I don’t usually participate in the performances but I revel in them and am grateful that our children inherited Jerry’s musical gifts.

I grew up in a family of beach lovers. Even when we didn’t have a car it was an easy walk to the Long Island train station and less than a half hour ride to the Rockaway ocean beaches. As I said in a previous blog I still remember my father taking me in the water on his shoulders when I was afraid of the water. That was so special that when my water fear passed I pretended to still have it so that the shoulder rides would continue. Then one day my father said that he detected such joy in my face as we were heading to the ocean that he wondered about my fears. I had to confess that they no longer existed but that I sure did love riding on his shoulders. He laughed and said the shoulder rides would continue but now they should be mixed in with some ocean swimming on my part. I agreed.

A few years ago son Jerry and his wife Teresa bought a home on the beach in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. We love visiting them there. It is also a happy reminder of the summer times as a young teen that I spent with my grandmother when she was staying in Spring Lake – a town close to Ocean Grove. My cousin Franny and I alternated spending time visiting with our grandmother.

Why is the beach so important to me? It is a thought I enjoy reflecting on. I love the ocean and its many faces – the water’s roughness, its smoothness, its beauty. It is a place to reflect, to plan, to make memories, to enjoy. Jerry and our children and grandchildren love the ocean as much as I do. That is a special gift.

Before March became the month when Jerry and I first met, March was special for me because it was the month when we celebrated St Patrick’s day. Both my parents were of Irish heritage but Pop’s parents were actually ” off the boat” from Ireland so his positive feelings about St. Patty’s Day might have been a tad stronger than my mother’s. Though my father spoke perfect English he loved to switch to the Irish brogue when he thought it appropriate. Both my brothers and I inherited that gift. Guess I was pretty good at it bcause in high school when the Genesians – our school acting club – decided to make the big Spring play be about Irish life – I was happy to show off my brogue skills and was able to land a major role in the production.

My brothers all boys high school was St Francis Xavier Military Academy High School. When I first heard the long winded name of the school they were going to, I thought the name a bit pompus. But in the years the brothers were at Xavier I came to love their school choice. The school marched in the big New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade. My all girls school , Mary Louis Academy, did not march. My parents and I would go into the City to see the parade and cheer the boys on. As I have said my brothers were two and four years older than me. I loved seeing them march down 5th Avenue and then getting together with them afterward. But I was boy shy around my brother’s friends, I was very conscious that I was the younger sister. With the passage of time both boys graduated from Xavier, Bud entering the Jesuit seminary and Pete heading off to Holy Cross College. On finishing Mary Louis I went on to Marymount College in New York City. I specify which Marymount I attended because there are other Marymounts but I think this is the only one specifically for day hops. This is the one I subwayed to for a year and a half to earn the sixty credits necessary for admission to Cornell University’s nursing program.

Mary Louis High School girls did not march in the St. Patrick’s parade but Marymount College girls did. Since I started Marymount in February I was there for two March 17ths and able to march in two parades. . There are St Patrick’s parades all over the United States. The New Yor City parade is probably the biggest and millions of people watch it.

I never saw the Xavier boys while marching for Marymount. Their location in the parade was just too far removed from the Marymount location. But when I was at Cornell – their nursing school and medical school are both in New York City – I had no classes on one parade day and was able to talk some of my classmates into joining me in walking over to 5th Avenue to watch the parade. It was so much fun and when I spotted the Xavier group about to pass by I was excited. I even felt some of the heart flutters that I used to feel when still in grade school. But now as I looked closely at the boys, I thought they were just children – some at least seven years younger than I who would soon be graduating from Cornell and starting my professsional career in nursing. These boys were just working their way through high school. It was so much fun to see them but that phase of my life was long over. I think that was one of the first times I truly focused on different life stages.

Wih graduation looming I think the nursing school did an excellent job of preparing us for job looking – the professional nursing job search was an entirely different life stage then any of my classmates or I had experienced before. All these years later I still remember one talk from the nursing school Dean which focused on the practical aspects of looking for the appropriate job, bearing in mind the learning experience and realistic capabilities which we, at that time, brought to the job market. She gave the example of being offered the deanship of a nursing school. We all laughed, at the thought of such an offer but her exaggeration for emphasis really hit home. The job market for nurses at that time was wide open. There were lots of possibilities out there and the Dean was just cautioning us to choose wisely. My nursing school rotation in public health had been a strong favorite for me. Having grown up in suburban New York Ciity and gone to school in New York City I thought it was time to expand my horizons. I took a job with the Arlington County, Virginia Health Department. Both my brothers were living in the DC area and one of my closest friends from high school, Gen, had gone to college there and she wanted to stay in that area as did one of her close college friends. We three decided to live together in Glover Park, right outside of Georgetown. This worked well for me because the drive from Glover Park to the health department office in Arlington was not bad – maybe twenty to thirty minutes depending on traffic.

I loved being a public health nurse. It offered so much variety from clinic nursing, to home nursing, to school nursing. The clinic nursing was an eye opener for me with its white well baby clinic, the black well baby clinic, and the white and black maternity clinics. This was segregation that I knew existed but had never experienced. Growing up on Long Island, if there was segregation, I was oblivious to it.

My father’s longest running teaching job was one that he transferred to when he and my mother moved to Laurelton. The public school was located in South Jamaica in a predominately black neighborhood. All my growing years, it is the only teaching job that I remember for him. Even though Pop and my Mother had started their fledgling law practice, the post depression years were tough on them. Pop did not feel that he could give up the financial security that teaching offered.

My parents were married in 1930 when the country was experiencing the after effects of the 1929 stock market crash. My parents had met at the Fordham University Law School, in the evening session. Both were putting themselves through school – as was Mom’s twin sister Marg-Pop, by being a public school teacher, and my mother by working at the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. My mother’s parents could have helped with the twins tuition however they were not excited with the path the twins had chosen. But ultimately they were very proud of their daughters.

My father never gave up the teaching profession and the financial security it offered. The post depresssion years were financially tough for my parents and their contemporaries. Pop and Mom had their own law practice but it took many years of hard work for them to make it profitable. My Mother ran the practice during the day while my father was pursuing his teaching job. For most of his teaching career my father taught in black schools. I never heard a word from him that suggested he had a racial bias. So when I was introduced to a public health system that had different clinics for the black and white population it was an adjustment. When various folks heard that I had accepted a job with the Arlington Health Department they were happy for me but told me there would have to be some racial adjustments on my part. With the Health Department color organized clinics I finally I got a glimpse of what they were talking about. I am and was inspired by the words of Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

And now we are in April. March passed by so quickly. This blog installment was actually finished about a week ago. But visits from precious family and good friends so occupied my time and thoughts that I doubted my ability to do a proper job of proof reading.