The Summer Friend: A Memoir by Charles McGrath

Author:Charles McGrath [McGrath, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Buying In

Snowdie wasn’t for everyone. We had friends from home come to visit who were distinctly underwhelmed and drove away baffled. My mother-in-law, too. When she came to visit the first time she was visibly disapproving, a disappointment to both Nancy and me, for my mother-in-law, too, was a summer person. She loved the season ardently and brought with her high hopes for it every year. She came from Maryland, and some of her most cherished memories were of summers at the family farm on Gibson Island, in the Chesapeake, where her father, whom she adored, was a well-known yachtsman and racer of Star boats. (He’s someone I really wish I had known. Not only was he a great sailor, but he was also a legendary hockey player at St. Paul’s School, in New Hampshire, back when hockey was just getting started in this country.) So my mother-in-law grew up doing all the things that we and our children did—sailing, swimming, beachcombing—but in a posher way. This was back when summering was still for the well-to-do. There were yacht club teas and yacht club dances. Dinner, even at home, was prepared by servants, and everyone dressed for it, the boys bathed and combed, my mother-in-law probably in a summer dress and with a ribbon in her hair.

She didn’t cling to the past. For her class and generation, she was remarkably progressive. I sometimes wondered, though, whether her dislike of Snowdie didn’t stem in part from the way it was a reminder of another, better time. Or maybe she just wanted a better mattress and some half-decent kitchen appliances. I do think she would like our present house, and not just because it contains some of her own furniture. It’s nothing special. Chip, who had high architectural standards, and liked summer houses with big windows and sweeping views, rolled his eyes the first time he saw it, and I’m not sure he ever understood why we opted for a place so ordinary. If it had been up to him, he would have had us wait for years and years (while still renting Snowdie) until the perfect house came along.

Our son, after a recent visit with his family, sent us an email saying what a good time he’d had and thanking us for our foresight in purchasing the place. It was less foresight than happenstance, and, who knows, another place might have worked just as well. But this is the one we have. The house is a 1930s Cape. There’s a big kitchen with a front window overlooking a garden; what our grandkids call the Fireplace Room—a sort of parlor, whose main focus is a hearth; and the Blue Room—formerly a garage and now a many-windowed living and dining space. A couple of downstairs bedrooms, a couple more up, reached by a perilously steep Cape Cod staircase, where I will probably break my neck one of these days, trying to descend in the dark. A basement with bad light and a noisy

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