TO THE LIGHTHOUSE – LOVING THE JERSEY SHORE — AND A BIRTHDAY

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We went to Long Beach Island, off the Jersey shore, a few weeks ago.  I’ve been there  often but never before May — it was still winterish there, hardly anything open and just lovely.  We came with friends for my husband’s birthday — four adults and four little kids.  It’s so much fun to be there with little people searching the beach for shells in their parkas and climbing all over the furniture.  We took them to Barnegat Light  — a 150 year old lighthouse I’ve loved since I was a kid. 

It was a 20 minute walk in very cold weather, everyone excited about seeing a real live lighthouse.  Somehow anything, no matter how many times you’ve seen it, looks brand new when you see it with small children.  When it’s new to them, it becomes new to you too.

It was, according to my husband, a perfect birthday.  Much of the credit for that goes to the friends who came with us, who wrote and performed a song for him as a gift because "you have too much stuff already" and, in so many ways have taken us into their lives with love.  I just posted a meditation on being a ‘fake grandmother" on the SV Moms "over 50" blog, where I’m a new contributor.  It’s such a peculiar privilege – hanging out with preschoolers in that easy way that can only happen with frequent contact.

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