My family has been coming to Eastern Shore for 100 years where I have spent this past week. Many of those years were spent in Ocean City, Maryland but for the last 55 years or so we have been right across the state line in Fenwick Island, Delaware.

Six generations have put their feet in the sand here, watched the surf wash up over their feet and swam in the Ocean waters of the Atlantic. My mother and father met down here. He was a lifeguard. She was a waitress. On any given year, anywhere from 100-180 people stay at the beach on the same given week. There are blood relatives, and what we call beach relatives. Many have passed away, but many more, including about three dozen grandchildren of my generation, keep the numbers up and growing.

Beach rental prices have outpaced inflation by a considerable amount. All of us find rentals in the same 10 block area and we all assemble on the same centrally located peace of soft, white sandy beach with our umbrellas and chairs and beach toys and good summertime books to read. Each new child, introduced to the sand, sun and surf for the first time such as my 11-month-old grandson, Johnny this year, takes it on individual merit. Johnny doesn’t like the sand but is content to sit in a baby pool on top of the sand and splash around. Eventually, all kids take to the water like fish, so much so, that we get nervous watching them dive over and submerge under the waves.

5pm is Happy Hour at the beach. The sun is drifting down westward, and the ocean breeze is cooler. People bring snacks and food, and adults bring adult beverages which are illegal on the beach before that time. We sit in a giant circle in our beach chairs and talk and laugh and relive memories and toast those who have gone on to heaven which we all hope is a lot like Fenwick Island.

Most years there is a crab feast but like the rent the price of crabs has outpaced inflation.  I remember my Dad picking up a bushel of freshly steamed crabs for $40. Now each individual crab is ten bucks a piece. There is an art to pulling apart a crab to get to the meat inside, and at the end of the night the table looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Many nights we take the young ones to a place called Candy Kitchen for after dinner treats. Miniature golf is also on the agenda as well as board games, although they are becoming harder to compete with the tablets the kids bring along.

For many years I get up just before sunrise and bicycle south down the Ocean Highway which has a wide lane for our use down to the end of Ocean City and then travel north past Fenwick Island to Bethany Beach for a total of 30 miles or so. The terrain is flat. Sometimes the headwinds coming north or south make the pedaling a little challenging, but I enjoy the time before the area has come alive. Many of my almost 50,000 miles have been ridden down here, and I am blessed to have this time every summer for riding.

There used to be a movie theatre here that we could go to on rainy days, but it is gone and replaced with expensive condos. What hasn’t disappeared yet is the St. Andrew Parish Center which has one Mass during the summer on Sundays. People come dressed in more casual attire and with beach tanned skin. But, like every Mass on every Sunday in every country in the world, the miracle of transubstantiation occurs, and we can celebrate the sacrament.

Any moment that we can spend time with family and friends is a special moment. When I think of my great grandmother, my grandparents, my parents, most of my aunts and uncles and relatives and friends of my generation who have passed I take solace in the fact that I had this time at the beach with them. I will never forget sitting in my maternal grandparents’ place here one day with some cousins and siblings laughing about who was going to lay claim to their silverware when they were gone. Now they are gone. I have no idea who ended up with the silver. The memory is far more valuable than spoons or forks. I pray that one day my children and grandchildren, and with God’s blessing, my great grandchildren will have take solace in my time with them at the beach. I wonder who will lay claim to my bicycle?

 Jim Silcott